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Immigration Tag

Posted by Mike LaChance on November 28, 2014 18 Comments
According to a new report from FOX News, illegal immigrants who fit certain criteria set forth by Obama last week will be eligible for taxpayer funded programs:
Illegal immigrants to be eligible for Social Security, Medicare Illegal immigrants who apply for work permits in the U.S. under President Obama’s new executive actions will be eligible for Social Security and Medicare, the White House says. Under the sweeping actions, immigrants who are spared deportation could obtain work permits and a Social Security number, which would allow them to pay into the Social Security system through payroll taxes. No such "lawfully present" immigrant, however, would be immediately entitled to the benefits because like all Social Security and Medicare recipients they would have to work 10 years to become eligible for retirement payments and health care. To remain qualified, either Congress or future administrations would have to extend Obama's actions so that those immigrants would still be considered lawfully present in the country.
As Instapundit says, who could have seen this coming?

Posted by Mike LaChance on November 25, 2014 54 Comments
The Ferguson verdict is in: No indictment. The people who deserve the most sympathy in Ferguson are the parents of Michael Brown who lost their son. That makes them the biggest losers and I mean that in a sympathetic way. The second biggest loser in Ferguson is the liberal media which flocked to the scene and stoked racial bias. Now that the facts are in, they look like complete fools. I mean that in a non-sympathetic way. The third biggest loser in Ferguson is President Obama who made a hasty statement on the situation which opened with these words:
First and foremost, we are a nation built on the rule of law.
We are? Really? Watch Obama's statement below:

Posted by Mike LaChance on November 23, 2014 12 Comments
Wow. It's not often that I can say it but this new video from the GOP is really powerful. Whoever made this video deserves a promotion. The ad uses an audio track of Hillary Clinton criticizing George W. Bush's so-called "imperial presidency." Via the Washington Free Beacon:
An Imperial Presidency A new video released by the GOP on Friday calls out former Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton for her hypocrisy on the issue of executive action. In 2008, Clinton said the George W. Bush administration was transforming the executive branch into an “imperial presidency.” In 2014, Clinton said she supported President Obama’s decision to grant citizenship to more than four million illegal immigrants. Clinton unknowingly provided the narration for the GOP’s newest video. “Unfortunately our current president does not seem to understand the basic character of the office he holds,” Clinton said of Bush in April 2008. “Rather than faithfully execute the laws, he has rewritten them through signing statements, ignored them through secret legal opinions, undermined them by elevating ideology over facts. Rather than defending the constitution, he has defied its principles and traditions.”
Check it out:
“This administration’s unbridled ambition to transform the executive into an imperial presidency in an attempt to strengthen the office has weakened our nation.”
But that was then. This is now:

Posted by Mike LaChance on November 22, 2014 7 Comments
Remember those "intended immigration consequences" I was talking about yesterday? The word is out. Brendan Bordelon of National Review captured this exchange on CNN:
Illegal Immigrant Tells CNN She Was Inspired to Cross Border by Obama Amnesty “Did the possibility of immigration reform inspire you to come now?” CNN’s Alina Machado asked the Central American migrant waiting for a bus ticket on Thursday. “Yes, that’s right,” the woman said. “That inspired us.” “Now?” the reporter pressed. “Yes, now,” the woman replied.
Watch the video: Media responses to Obama's plan have been mixed but I like this piece by David Harsanyi of The Federalist:

Posted by Amy Miller on November 22, 2014 48 Comments
Today the House GOP sued the Obama Administration in federal court over the Administration's decision to make changes to the version of the Affordable Care Act that Congress passed. From CNN:
The one-two punch from Boehner marks a new era of tension between Republicans who will officially take over Congress in January, and the President who has signaled that despite his party's losses in the midterms, he plans to proceed with his agenda without GOP cooperation. After two Washington firms pulled out of commitments to represent the House in recent months, Boehner hired George Washington law professor Jonathan Turley earlier this week. Turley is an expert on constitutional law and has appeared on multiple television networks as a legal analyst. Boehner and other top congressional Republican leaders are also contemplating a filing a separate lawsuit challenging the president's authority to take executive action to give 5 million immigrants temporary status.
This move has been coming since July, when the chamber passed House Resolution 676, which authorized the lawsuit. Although lawmakers are already being criticized for not taking immediate action to stop Obama's executive order on immigration, there's a good reason for the delay.

Posted by Amy Miller on November 21, 2014 13 Comments
Last night, the President did more than bring illegal immigrants "out of the shadows" with his executive order. With the stroke of a pen, he made it harder for law enforcement officials to protect Americans from illegals who stick their heads out of the shadows to commit violent crimes. As part of his executive order, President Obama suspended the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Secure Communities program. Secure Communities required the FBI to automatically send the fingerprints of anyone arrested by state or local police to DHS for a cross check; DHS could then screen the arrestee to see if the person was either a criminal alien, or someone who fell under civil immigration enforcement priorities. The program was responsible for identifying and deporting hundreds of thousands of dangerous criminals who are here illegally and already in custody is no more. Amazingly, Democrats in Texas are celebrating the move:
“The existing misnamed ‘Secure Communities’ program is being terminated and replaced,” [U.S. Representative Lloyd] Doggett said in a statement to the American-Statesman. “With (the Department of Homeland Security) focusing on threats to national security and public safety, some immigration employees will likely be reassigned to higher priority duties. Future DHS requests to local law enforcement for release notification will likely focus on those who have committed a serious felony.” U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement currently asks that local law enforcement agencies keep people in custody for an extra 48 hours after they have posted bail or otherwise been cleared for release if they’re suspected of being in the country illegally. The program has drawn criticism from activists who argue it leads to the deportation of nonviolent undocumented immigrants, and the Austin City Council in June passed a resolution in opposition to Travis County’s participation in the program.
Having lived in Texas (and I will say I didn't truly understand the immigration crisis until I saw it firsthand,) I don't understand how Texas Democrats can possibly condone a policy that makes it more difficult for the police to control violence in border states. It's indefensible.

Posted by Mike LaChance on November 21, 2014 26 Comments
You know who's really excited about Obama's new immigration plan? Future illegal immigrants. Paul Bedard of the Washington Examiner reported:
ICE readies 2,400 beds for new spring surge of illegal immigrants through Texas The Obama administration is bracing for another surge of illegal immigrants next spring, bringing online a family detention center that will have 2,400 beds. “We must be prepared for traditional, seasonal increases in illegal migration. The Dilley facility will provide invaluable surge capacity should apprehensions of adults with children once again surge this spring,” said Acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Thomas S. Winkowski. In advance of the president’s new pro-immigrant announcement set for Thursday night, ICE is readying its strategy for next year when over 100,000 illegals are expected to flood over the U.S.-Mexico border. The agency said in a statement that it hopes illegal immigrants look at what they are doing in building holding facilities like the 2,400 bed center in Dilley, Texas, and will decide the trip isn’t worth it.
Uh huh. Good luck with that. Charles Kruathammer recently nailed the issue with a prediction.

Posted by Amy Miller on November 20, 2014 65 Comments
You can watch the announcement here at Legal Insurrection, or on the White House website. We're a little less than 30 minutes away from Obama's big announcement on his plan to overhaul immigration, and Twitter is already buzzing: UPDATE: Here we go

Posted by New Neo on November 20, 2014 22 Comments
For months Obama has been saying, "I'm gonna do it, I'm really gonna do it---unless of course you give me what I want." He even told us the timing; it would be after the election. In doing so, he will be keeping a promise to his radical base (Hispanic and otherwise), issuing a threat to the Republicans in Congress, and thumbing his nose at the American voters who expressed disapproval of him on November 4. You don't get a trifecta like that every day from a president. I just wrote that what Obama is about to do constitutes a threat to Republicans in Congress. But actually, it's a threat to Congress itself. Democrats should be just as disturbed as Republicans by it, because it's not the ends that are as important here as the very dangerous means. But if you've listened to a great many Democrats talk about it, you'd think ends are all they care about---and you might just be correct for most of them. Obama has the strong support of leading Democrats, who seem only too happy to cede the power of Congress to the president to get something they think will benefit the Party. Of course, they don't state that it's a dangerous executive power overreach; they say this is just like what other presidents have done when they used their executive discretion to tweak immigration laws. Surely they must be aware of the differences. But being aware has nothing to do with it; ideologues of the left have no trouble telling themselves that 2 + 2 = 5, and that what Reagan and Bush did was just the same as what Obama is poised to do now, even though only political junkies have even heard of the former actions before because they were relatively non-controversial. Frum summarizes the differences here, and they are substantial:

Posted by Mike LaChance on November 20, 2014 8 Comments
Shushannah Walshe of ABC News notes that Republican governors are being hostile to Obama's immigration power grab:
GOP Governors Mostly Hostile on Obama Immigration Executive Action Potential 2016 GOP presidential candidates at the Republican Governors Association annual conference gave very different responses to the president’s decision to announce major executive action on immigration reform Thursday. At the gathering at the posh Boca Raton Resort and Club, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie dodged, Texas Gov. Rick Perry threatened, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal accused the president of throwing a “temper tantrum” and Ohio Gov. John Kasich sounded a more moderate tone. Christie, the RGA’s outgoing chairman, refused to weigh in saying, “We will have to wait and see what he says and what he does and what the legal implications are.”
Is that a story? You know who else used to be hostile to that power grab?

Posted by Amy Miller on November 20, 2014 36 Comments
I may have been born and raised in America, but I have an immigration story, too. My grandma fled post-World War II Denmark with her family after the Nazis finally turned tail in May of 1945. After 3 tense years of uneasy collaboration and 2 of direct resistance against occupation, Denmark was exhausted, and so was my family. So, they came here; because my grandma was a minor at the time, her processing was pretty simple. She received papers, a social security number, and became a citizen of the United States just like thousands of others did during the post-war era. Fast forward 45 or so years, and there's a problem with my grandma's social security paperwork; not just a little problem, but a major problem that took two years, hours of travel time, and thousands of dollars to solve. Somewhere along the line, some bureaucrat in a cube in Chicago had dotted an "i" instead of crossing a "t," and now it was my grandma's responsibility to prove that her social security number was valid, and that she was indeed a citizen. The moral of the story is, our immigration system needs an overhaul. It does not, however, need the overhaul that Obama is planning. Tonight, President Obama will sit himself down in front of a camera and lay out a 10 point plan he insists will "fix our broken immigration system." It will do no such thing, but amnesty advocates around the country are preparing their flocks for what they believe will be a lifechanging announcement. From the Washington Times:
At Adalberto United Methodist Church in Chicago, which makes immigration a special ministry, Pastor Emma Lozano said she’ll he sitting alongside people who are currently facing deportation as they hear what the president lays out. “We’re going to be watching this very closely, people in my church. We’re going to have the TV on in both languages and really praying and hoping we get what we deserve,” she told The Washington Times. Casa, a major immigrant-rights group based in Maryland and Virginia, plans three screening parties, while the New York Immigration Coalition announced three parties around the Big Apple. “The president will detail his plans to take executive action to provide administrative relief to millions of immigrants,” the New York group said. “We expect such relief to be a program that offers a temporary solution for millions of families and workers around the country, offering protection from deportation and work authorization.”
Maybe Emma shouldn't pray too hard about what those facing deportation may or may not deserve, all things considered.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 16, 2014 35 Comments
One of the most frequent questions I get is "How can we stop Obama from ...." The ellipses reflects that there are a variety of issues on which people want Obama stopped. The answer to most of those questions is, as Obama himself suggested, to go out and win some elections. And that is exactly what just happened earlier this month. In what appropriately could be termed a legal insurrection, voters around the country rejected the Party of Obama and his policies. So much so that Republicans in the House have a historic majority even beyond what the 2010 wave brought in, and Republicans regained control of the Senate by a comfortable margin. That will go a long way towards stopping Obama, but only if Obama respects the boundaries of his constitutional power. By tradition, a President respects the constitutional powers of the other branches of government, although there always is tension. When that respect is breached, there is precious little constitutional enforcement power. Congress can write laws, but it cannot execute those laws; for that Congress depends on the Executive Branch, which is given some level of enforcement discretion since no legislation can be so specific as to delineate who does what and when. Similarly, the Courts are loathe to get involved in refereeing political disputes between Congress and the President, and there even are questions as to whether Congress has "standing" to sue to demand enforcement. The Supreme Court has no army, other than the public expectation that its decisions will be respected. On the flip side, Congress has no power, for example, to conduct its own foreign policy, appoint its own ambassadors and operate its own embassies. The bonds that keep our constitutional system working are not through the barrel of a gun, but through the core good faith of each branch respecting constitutional boundaries.

Posted by Mike LaChance on November 15, 2014 21 Comments
Charles Krauthammer appeared on Megyn Kelly's show this week to discuss Obama's plans for amnesty by executive order. Kelly, who is a lawyer, pointed out that we're entering "uncharted waters" and that even Reagan's famous amnesty was done with congress. Krauthammer concurred and pointed out that it's an impeachable offense. Transcript and video by the Washington Free Beacon:
Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer said President Obama’s plan to grant amnesty to 4.5 million illegal immigrants was “an impeachable offense.” Krauthammer said that prosecutorial discretion, which Obama is invoking to justify his executive action, is only meant for extreme cases in which one or two individuals are prevented from being deported. “I believe it is an impeachable offense,” Krauthammer told Fox News host Megyn Kelly on Thursday.
“This idea of prosecutorial discretion is really a travesty. It is intended for extreme cases. for a case where you want to show mercy for individual or two where it’s unusual incident unusual circumstances and you say, okay, we’re going to give this person a pass. it was never intended to abolish a whole class of people subject to a law and to essentially abolish whole sections of a law.”
Krauthammer said Obama’s executive action threat resembles a South American dictator more than an American president.
“That’s the way the system is in Venezuela. If the the caudillo isn’t able to get stuff done through congress, he issues a decree and that’s it, and he’ll arrest anybody who gets in the way,” Krauthammer said. “The whole American system is designed that it has to be a collaboration between the Congress and the president. Congress has to pass it, he has to sign it. That’s the way the damn thing works.”
Watch the exchange: Senator Ted Cruz has also been outspoken about Obama's plan.

Posted by Amy Miller on November 15, 2014 28 Comments
Brace yourselves...executive action on immigration policy is coming. Next week, President Obama is scheduled to reveal a 10-point, comprehensive immigration reform plan through executive action. The plan's most controversial provisions would expand deferred action and halt deportations for millions of illegal immigrants. Although Republicans have repeatedly warned Obama against going over the heads of the House and Senate on the issue of immigration, the President has vowed "not to wait" for Congress to act. Republican warnings don't seem to have as much persuasive power as donor dollars, and Obama has those flowing in by the bucket. Immigration reform has become a pet project of the left, and over the last decade left wing organizations and NGOs have pumped millions into groups backing radical immigration reform---and now those groups are expecting Obama to keep his promise to stop deportations.
The calls started shortly after President Obama’s news conference on the day after the midterm elections. He had said he would go ahead with action on immigration before year’s end, in spite of warnings from Republicans that he could wreck relations with the new Congress they will control. White House officials were calling immigrant advocates to talk strategy and shore up their support. The officials wanted to reassure them, several activists said, that the president, after delaying twice this year, was ready to take the kind of broad measures they had demanded to shield immigrants here illegally from deportation. The White House calls — and the president’s decision itself — reflected the clout the immigrant movement has built up in recent years, as it grew from a cluster of scattered Washington lobbying groups into a national force. A vital part of that expansion has involved money: major donations from some of the nation’s wealthiest liberal foundations, including the Ford Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Open Society Foundations of the financier George Soros, and the Atlantic Philanthropies. Over the last decade those donors have invested more than $300 million in immigrant organizations, including many fighting for a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on November 10, 2014 45 Comments
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.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 08, 2014 32 Comments
As expected, on Saturday Obama nominated Loretta Lynch to replace Eric Holder as Attorney General. I'm not sure how many more times I'll make this disclosure -- but for the second time I'll note that I'm biased in favor of my law school classmate. I remember Loretta as a very nice person, not something that can be said about some of my classmates. Loretta's career, to the extent I've followed it, seems pretty straight forward as a prosecutor:
President Clinton first appointed Lynch to be a U.S. Attorney in 1999. She left for private practice in 2001 before being appointed a second time by Obama in 2010. In her years in the post, Lynch's office in Brooklyn has handled a wide-ranging caseload — cutting-edge cybercrime, high-stakes financial fraud and dramatic Mafia busts straight out of a Martin Scorsese movie. The office also helped convict the masterminds of the thwarted al Qaeda plot to attack the New York subway system. This year, Lynch's office announced it would indict Rep. Michael Grimm, R-N.Y., on federal fraud, tax evasion and perjury charges. Grimm, who won his re-election bid Tuesday, has pleaded not guilty. Lynch has also prosecuted several Democratic public officials, including State Sen. John L. Sampson, former State Sen. Pedro Espada Jr. and Assemblyman William F. Boyland Jr.
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