Will Obama go rogue on immigration?
It certainly looks that way
President Obama is once again threatening to enforce immigration reform through Executive Order.
Obama threatened immigration “reform” (a term no one seems to be able to define exactly) via Executive Order this summer. As midterms drew closer and Democrats were getting hammered on the issue, he backed off the subject. As NPR reported, ““The reality the president has had to weigh is that we’re in the midst of the political season,” a White House official says, noting that Obama “believes it would be harmful to the policy itself and to the long-term prospects” for reform if he acted before November.”
In an interview with Face the Nation that was taped Friday, President Obama indicated, “I’m going to do what I need to do” concerning immigration reform.
More concerning is that Obama seems to understand that his actions are easily remedied by Congressional action, which would also seem to indicate that he’s aware Executive Action is not the proper procedure for what should be a legislative decision. Saying, “the minute they [the House] pass a bill that addresses the problems with immigration reform, I will sign it and it supersedes whatever actions I take and I’m encouraging them to do so.” Although he made no mention of what the “problems with immigration reform” might be.
Perhaps most problematic is that the president is willing to place millions of foreign nationals in limbo with rule by fiat, knowing his actions will be overturned. For example, if his Executive Action includes provisions for Dreamers and Congressional Action does not, the fallout will be catastrophic. Not to mention the fact that lives, families, and futures are at stake. Yet the President and The Democrats are content to politicize the issue, consequences be damned.
There is no national consensus on what needs to be done or what “comprehensive immigration reform” actually looks like. Immigration issues go far beyond undocumented foreign nationals and border security. To overhaul and entire immigration system in a manner that actually addresses the systemic problems requires careful consideration, not an “act or else!” approach. Sadly, the President is choosing the latter.
True to form, Obama is acting as though he’s the boss of a coequal branch of the government. “”John [Boehner], let’s get this passed through The House.” For a year I stood back and let him work on this,” Obama told Face the Nation, “He decided not to call the Senate bill and he couldn’t produce his own bill.” He went on:
“John, if you don’t do it, I’ve got legal authority to make improvements on the system. I prefer and still prefer to see it done through Congress but every day that I wait, we’re misallocating resources, we’re deporting people that shouldn’t be deported, we’re not deporting folks that are dangerous and need to be deported, so John, I’m gonna give you some time, but if you can’t get it done before the end of the year, I’m gonna have to take the steps that I can to improve the system.”
It’s nice that the president is suddenly concerned about allocation of resources given Benghazi, Fast and Furious, the national debt, and innumerable other incidents, but I digress.
Given his recent action on net neutrality and his unwillingness to work with anyone other than himself, it’s safe to say we’re headed towards a long, nasty, immigration fight.
You can watch his entire interview on Face the Nation here:
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Comments
Rule by decree and no political mechanism to restore constitutional rule [assuming Democrats back anything Obama does as they have so far and the Institutional Republicans do also as they have done so far], it seems that the Rubicon is going to be crossed. If it has not been already.
Just so we know what the new rules are.
Subotai Bahadur
Curious how it’s somehow fiercely urgent to get something done on immigration NOW, when Obama has been president since 2009, and had Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate until 2011, and could have passed any kind of immigration law he wanted back then. The amnesty activists could have had a law that fulfilled every dream on their wish list — if Obama had really wanted to do something for them. But he doesn’t really give a damn; it’s just another issue for him to cynically use to rile up his base, and divide the country. He is contemptible.
He is BENEATH contempt.
I have never hated anyone as I do this usurper…
It’s taken way too long, but most people now get Obama is nuts and is the fraud most of us here knew he was very early on.
When will enough people understand that he is also a traitor?
It’s really fascinating.
This man lies in such an amazing scope and scale. He has great big, huge lies, and little platoons of smaller lies in support.
And, when you frame your thinking of him in terms of someone who is merely incompetent, you find yourself suffering from cognitive dissonance. You really DID just see him set up the flood of kids from south of Mexico. That was real, wasn’t it? But here he is talking about waiting for the Congress to act on some nebulous problems. What?
So, again, and in the service of sanity, you have to understand this is a man who is doing what he does by design. He PLANNED the flood of kids, and you have to step up to that reality. Yes, he KNEW that kids would die in route. He KNOWS that they are working at getting lost in the vast bureaucracy, and we’ll never find all of them, though the really dangerous ones will turn up at crime scenes. He PLANNED the inflaming of La Race, and knew that they’d turn out to “pressure him”, right on cue.
If Congress passes a new law, it won’t matter what it says. He’ll do what he wants, and he’ll blame the legislative process as he just breaks the law. “Golly, I waited, but they failed to act. Now I just gotta do something…”
And we cannot let him.
You’re right that Obama will do what he wants, secure in the knowledge that Boehner and McConnell will do absolutely nothing to impede his actions,
First, I make no such assumption.
Second, it won’t be up to them…or anyone in the legislature…alone. There’s another whole branch.
Third, it may be up to us
Now you have my attention! The whole other branch can be drawn out for years and with the cowed Chief Justice I wouldn’t expect much. But….”it may be up to us”? What do you have in mind?
Always, we have the right to withdraw our consent to be governed.
And, as I’ve mentioned before, we have at least one tool the Revolutionaries did not have, making an insurrection capable of being both unstoppable and peaceful. Thoreau pointed the way, but the method has been refined and applied many times since.
Rags; You’ve selected the appropriate blog site to share that possibility, if only by its name sake if not for the company you keep here.
Obama can sign a Billion exective orders –
No One has to follow them!
Here’s a thought. While the Red President is in China, the U.S. Air Force ought to block his re-entry into the U.S. Then the Illegal Alien White House Resident can go back to whatever rock he crawled out from under.
Snark Snark
His “autobiography” talks about being careful to not move to quickly, and “not scare the white folks.” I presume that refers to techniques of deceit.
Isn’t “not scare the white folks” a frightfully racist statement? I think so.
It’s a bean ball, thrown high, inside, and at your temple.
It’s designed to push you off the plate using the disgusting tool of racism.
Ben Stein declared Obama the Most Racist President in all U.S. history. Obama even beat out slave owning presidents!
That’s probably the only thing his ‘his’ biography that he wrote.
He can write? It’s not been proven yet.
The only Harvard Law Review Chief Editor who never wrote a single article for it………
Which “we” do you mean and how are they going to stop him? Boehner and McConnell have already surrendered their Constitutional weapons in advance of the battle.
Our president says we’re not deporting dangerous folks who need to be deported. What exactly is holding him back?
The fact that he doesn’t want to deport them.
And nothing else.
I really want to know what sort of “reform” is meant, every time.
If immigration “reform” means the addition of the guest worker program that Ted Kennedy refused to include in our law the last time; and
if the pathway to citizenship does NOT include an illegal act,
I can consider it.
The democrats immigration “reform” that they want so desperately reminds me of the governor and his advisors on Oh Brother Where Art Thou when they decide they have to “get some of that REform!” and then start swatting each other.
“Perhaps most problematic is that the president is willing to place millions of foreign nationals in limbo with rule by fiat”
Why would he care? He controls INS, so if any of the foreign nationals he lets in aren’t ratified by Congress he’ll order INS to ignore them anyway. The same goes for the Chagas and Ebola epidemics he’s trying to foment here. Nobody at INS is going to deport disease-ridden foreigners and risk Obama’s displeasure.
O’s still bluffing, trying to buffalo Congress. If he really thought he could get what he wants by E.O., he wouldn’t be dancing around like he is.
What he can do by Executive Order is direct the relevant Executive Dept agencies to take no actions to prevent the flood of illegals or deport any already here. But that doesn’t turn illegals into voters, which is what the Dems think they need. He’ll need an amnesty (among other things) for that, and he apparently can’t think of a way to do it.
Since when did the Democrats care if their voters are illegal? We know plenty of non-citizens vote. Why else do you think the Democrats fight so hard to quash voting integrity initiatives like voter ID?
“Obama can sign a Billion exective orders –
No One has to follow them!”
What do you think will be Boehner’s reaction if Obama goes ahead with amnesty?
a) He’ll cry
b) Then he’ll cry some more
c) He’ll promise not to hold up the budget
d) He’ll promise not to do any acrimonious investigations of the exec branch to show that Republicans are “serious” and can “govern”.
e) He’ll say we need to keep quiet because we need to capture the presidency in 2016
f) All of the above
NewsMachete.com
Even Democrats – including citizens of Hispanic dissent – do not approve of an unrestricted blanket amnesty. Of course, most poll questions are carefully worded to avoid showing such sentiments.
Real reform is definitely needed, not the least to get those people on tax rolls and buying car insurance, etc. Only fools think it possible to deport the 10-12 million already here illegally. But past amnesties promised enforcement which never came, so this time we must insist on enforcement first, period.
~
Obama’s bluff should be called, his budgets should be cut, and the situation will end up killing the Democratic Party if he doesn’t back down.
And we should resolve that a) those here illegally must get in line legally to become citizens, no shortcuts, and b) anyone who takes Obama’s phony amnesty will be forever banned from citizenship.
How telling that you, GOP RINO’s biggest cheerleader, say absolutely nothing about securing the border. What’s the freakin’ point of all you recommend if you leave the border wide open?
Estragon, that is what I have observed in the last 2 years amoung the great many Hispanic community members around me.
They are definitely NOT for Obama, and now realize how Obama has lied, lied, and lied to them – just using them.
We don’t need immigration reform which is codespeak for amnesty – we just need existing laws on the books enforced. But nobody will do that. I’d like to see us try to deport 30-35M illegals.
It never ceases to amaze me when politicians call for more laws to replace the ones they won’t uphold in the first place.
I disagree somewhat, because I think we do need to reform our immigration laws. Not “immigration reform” as code for another massive, counter-productive amnesty, but real reform.
For example, we need to streamline the immigration appeals process. Under existing law, illegal aliens get almost unlimited opportunities to appeal adverse rulings. This is how Obama’s illegal alien aunt in Massachusetts was able to remain in the U.S. for decades after her original deportation order; she kept offering up new legal theories on appeal until she finally found one that an immigration judge would buy — an asylum claim.
Speaking of asylum claims, that is another area of current immigration law that desperately needs to be reformed. We need to define who can qualify as a “refugee” much more narrowly, and we need to impose some reasonable standard of proof (not merely the vague expression of “fear” that suffices now). We also need limits on the numbers who can claim “refugee” status in any given year, and we need to eliminate “economic refugee” status (i.e. “poor”) entirely. We also need to put stricter limits on how many visa extensions can be granted to so-called “temporary” refugees. We have “refugees” here from places like Haiti, Guatemala, Honduras, etc., for natural disasters (e.g., earthquakes, floods, etc.) that happened in their countries many years ago, because the government keeps extending their visas over and over again. At some point, these “temporary” refugees need to go home.
Also, one of the most important reforms we need is to limit the amount of discretion that the executive branch can exercise when it comes to enforcing immigration laws. Congress has delegated far too much of its law-making authority to the president in the past, which is how we came to be in the position we’re in today, with Obama threatening to use his “executive authority” to unilaterally amnesty millions of illegal aliens. Congress needs to spell out, in clear and concise terms, the limits to a president’s “prosecutorial discretion” when it comes to immigration laws.
Those are just a few areas of our current immigration laws that need real reform. There are many more.
Be suspicious of the salesman. The only thing “missing” from Obama’s announcement is that he throw in a free 12 piece knife set, if you sign the contract.
Now, if he throws Amnesty out there … does he do it before Christmas? You mean “it’s funded?” I’ve read that when Congress starts in January … with all the newly elected people. And, the swing to both houses having republicans in the majority … there’s a good chance ALL money that would be needed to print green cards, would be snipped from the budget. A lot of Obama Care’s financial needs will also disappear from the budget.
Budgets start in the house. And, then go to the senate. And, the bill goes through “reconciliation” … where you get congressmen and senators signing onto the bill, before it heads out to the White House.
Today, I thought that in January Obama will be going in front of a Joint Session of Congress to give his State of the Union address. So there ya go. Obama has to save something for his speech. Either there will be applause. or not. Rarely is dicorum broken where an individual congress-critter shouts out “NO.” (Happened once a few years ago.)
You’ll also get to see if the Supreme Court judges come to hear this speech. Out of the nine, I’ll bet 5 show up. Ruth Ginsberg won’t because she falls asleep. So one. Or the other. Will save themselves some embarrassment. Heck I can remember when Alito silently voiced his objection; while shaking his head, no. And, that was considered a crime against protocol.
There will be a show, ahead. And, there are a few people currently writing drafts. Personally, I think Obama should walk in and say: My hands are up. Don’t shoot.
That was really well written, but I think you are dreaming about several items in there. The House won’t strip anything out of Obama’s budget because for fear that he will veto it and “shut down the government”. Just the thought of a government shutdown has Boehner running for the tanning booth.
As for budget bills originating in the House, I think the passage of Obamacare has demonstrated that’s not necessarily so.
We could really use a constitutional amendment such as we have in Georgia, that a bill can only address one subject. Calling a continuing resolution for trillions of dollars in the budget “clean” is a misnomer only the dems can get away with, because they control the media. A 2 trillion dollar CR is a filthy clogged sewer of spending, and if there’s anything needed in there, you can’t see it for the slime.
So, anyway, if a spending bill was only permitted to deal with one department or one area, then Obama would find it harder to close down the government over it. How would he explain not signing 100 spending bills because he didn’t like the 101st?
Plus, it would make our spending habits more transparent to taxpayers.
Excellent Karen. Let’s make it happen!
Back in 1980, when Ronald Reagan was testing his mike … (he didn’t know it was live at that point), he leaned forward and said “We Begin Bombing in Five Minutes.” Turned out it was broadcast far and wide. And, a majority of the people loved it. And, loved their president, too.
Now in the world of dynasties … were old politicians don’t fade away. They offspring keep claiming they’re entitled for leading rolls. Well, those well laid plans of mice and men, often go awry … Or in the case of Jimmy Carter, when Georgia’s votes were counted his grandson lost.
Over the next few years a number of dynasties are going to have to loosen their grips from running for public officers once held by elders in their family line.
Time to make it un-constitutional for any related family member (in-law or out-law) to even run for president.
Immigration ‘reform’ in two easy steps:
1. Secure the damn border.
2. Enforce the damn law.
3. de-kludge the LEGAL immigration systems
4. expend the same interest and expertise in information technology used to enhance Deemocrat voting in the tracking and identification of people here ILLEGALLY
5. put real teeth in law and regulations prohibiting employment of ILLEGALS AND cut them off from any form of welfare, leading to self-deportation
Remember: no amnesty program…anywhere in the world…has EVER worked.
Immigration reform
Make being an illegal a felony with 5 years in prison. First offenders will be given a choice of a trial an prison followed by deportation or pleading guilty receiving a suspended sentence followed by deportation. The will go straight to prison if they ever return. Also illegals will never be allowed back in the USA or be granted citizenship.
Those who aid illegals will receive 5 years in federal prison for each offense and this includes the politicians who operate sanctuaries. Every employer must use e-verify for all employees and contractors and sub-contractors.
Create a new branch of the FBI with the 15,000 ObamaCare agents dedicated to tracking down illegals.
I agree with the part about sending people who aid illegal aliens to prison but I do not agree with sending the aliens themselves to prison. Why would we want to pay to feed and house them? Now if we can charge the aliens parent country for their incarceration count me in!
Oh and amend the constitution to eliminate anchor babies. People born in the USA who’s parents are not permanent residents or citizens are not citizens.
No need to remove geographical birthright citizenship from our constitution to eliminate anchor babies, just remove family reunification, or apply it only to the citizen’s spouse and children, not his or her parents. Or even just make illegal immigrants permanently ineligible for residency or citizenship whatever the rationale.
Any of those will mean that the children will still qualify for citizenship (and may send money to their parents abroad) but they can’t act as anchors to bring their parents here.
Birthright citizenship has been abused, but it also discourages the formation of multi-generational second-class communities. Let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Especially because amending the law is immensely more doable than amending the constitution.