Posted on 11/13/2014 11:34:00 AM PST by 11th_VA
Following the electoral thumping the pro-amnesty Democrats received on Tuesday, President Obama told a White House news conference that he would nevertheless forge ahead and “get stuff done” on his plans for unilateral action on immigration.
His supposed executive authority to bypass congressionally enacted immigration law was front and center at this year’s Immigration Law and Policy Conference, a pro-open-borders confab held October 21 at Georgetown Law School. The task of laying out the legal case for Obama’s forthcoming amnesty was performed by Marc Rosenblum, senior analyst at the pro-amnesty Migration Policy Institute. Rosenblum is Obama’s former immigration-policy adviser, and he helped frame the 2007 McCain–Kennedy amnesty bill. To conference attendees (mostly law students), Rosenblum attempted to justify the amnesty by pointing out five previous “Executive Actions on Immigration” going back to the 1960s, each of which gave some degree of discretion to federal agencies in the management of deportations. To people who actually know immigration law, however, Rosenblum’s PowerPoint presentation was close to fraudulent.
What he left out was the fact that of the five executive actions he chose to discuss, four were illegitimate power grabs by federal agencies and were later restricted or completely killed by Congress, and the other wasn’t even an executive program at all, but one implemented by Congress. Rosenblum’s list actually turns out to be very useful for closed-borders advocates, as it shows a historical pattern of Congress pushing back against programs created out of thin air by the executive.
Rosenblum first noted that the executive has in the past exercised so-called “parole authority” as a sort of mass refugee program for whole groups of illegals, as it did after Castro’s takeover of Cuba in 1959, when the Immigration and Naturalization Service granted thousands of Cubans illegally residing in the U.S. permission to stay. But, as was pointed out in a recent court filing by the Immigration Reform Law Institute, the INS’s use of group parole was in violation of the Immigration and Naturalization Act, which grants parole only in isolated, case-by-case situations. In the words of the Court of Appeals for the second circuit, Congress clamped down on the practice in 1980 with the Refugee Act and again in 1996 with the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) because of a “concern that parole . . . was being used by the executive to circumvent congressionally established immigration policy.”
Other programs described by Rosenblum as justifying Obama’s amnesty have followed a similar pattern. The Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program, started in 1990, is basically a temporary refugee program that can be applied to certain national groups when their country of origin is ravaged by war or suffers a natural disaster. But TPS was implemented by Congress, not the executive. In fact, Congress passed the TPS law in order to restrain the executive, which had for years done on its own roughly the same thing TPS would do, through a program called Extended Voluntary Departure, which Rosenblum also covered. Congress reacted by creating an “exclusive remedy” in the area of deportation relief based on nationality, which was intended to tether by statute the executive’s potentially boundless application of deportation relief.
Another program Rosenblum cites, Deferred Enforced Departure, merely sought to revive what the executive had been doing before TPS. The courts have described this program as essentially the same as TPS, although in 2011 Obama extended deportation relief under DED to a group of Liberians living illegally in the United States.
Rosenblum’s final justification for Obama’s unilateral amnesty is Deferred Action. This program was an attempt by the executive to delegate to itself the authority to grant relief based on humanitarian reasons or reasons of convenience. Congress took back this authority with the 1996 passage of IIRIRA, and, although the Department of Homeland Security admitted in 1997 that the statute expunged Deferred Action, Obama cited Deferred Action as an authority in 2012 when he unilaterally implemented the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which has twice been held unconstitutional in federal court and which was based on a bill (the DREAM Act) that was rejected 24 times by Congress.
Executive action for group deportation relief has always been followed by Congress’s either rolling it back or regulating it on Congress’s own terms. With the GOP’s new mandate following the thumping of open-borders Democrats, the tension between Congress and the executive is now higher than it has ever been.
— Ian Smith is an attorney in Washington, D.C.
If we are going to have “open borders”, the American people should no longer have to pay taxes. Americans were never meant to support the entire freeloading world.
Same title could be used to describe the actions of the GOP-E.
Their hands are dirty.
bump
Do what you want but I suggest we start raising hell with our representatives that we want no funding of any of this —ZERO. and We need injuctive relief immediately in the federal courts to enjoin any agency from implimenting this uncostitutional madness. I think obmama is mentally ill now and refer to him as barrack insane obama.
Wouldn’t it be great to believe this will set up a constitutional show down with the Republican Congress? The fact is, Obama is looking across the table, and sees two girly men in McConnell, and Boehner, and he knows he will get away with it. Boehner will cry, and McConnell will go on talk shows to declare it is a math problem, while the Democrats will go on the attack, blaming the entire issue on Republicans, which, since there won’t be any push back from Republicans will resonate, and they will get kicked out of office in 2016 instead of more Democrats.
Didn't he used to be President of Rhodesia?
Look what happened to Rhodesia. They let all those Zimbabweans in and they took over.
LOL !!! POST OF THE DAY !!!!
It seemed to fit. Ha!!
Mmm mmm mmm, Barack Insane Obama.
That's my question; why can't the GOP get a court order to put a stay on any executive authorization until it came be determined if the executive has this power?
“The fact is, Obama is looking across the table, and sees two girly men in McConnell, and Boehner,”
Yes ,you are so right. We will see them bend over backwards for the the DEMS pleasures and constantly say “Its about 2016” but I assure them of this— if they do that , we are finished well before 2016 and certainly afterward because they lose because the base of the conservatives will never support them again. Why are we not raising hell on the budget and not funding obamacare (based on lies to the American People) and unconstitutional amnesty? NO MONEY!! Send barrack insane obama the balanced budget you ran on and let HIM SHUT THE GOVERNMENT DOWN!!! Yahoo! He has a pen!!
At least make them learn English if they intend to live here. I’m tired of not being able to converse with or being understood by many in the service industry.
The practical result, however, would be pretty much the opposite.
The Dems would then own the White House and quite possibly majorities in all the "big States". They would have a perpetual and self-perpetuating majority that conceivably would give them both the White House and one or both houses of Congress for as far as the eye can see.
But “we won”!
When has a democrat ever intentionally told the truth when a lie would better support their position?
I would suggest you sit and ponder this.
The President hints (via media) that it’s to be a 5.5 million group that he approves. The media also tells you that there are between fifteen and twenty-five million illegals in America. So, around one out of five will get some status, and the rest? NOTHING.
Sit and think over this. How many lawsuits will occur with illegals suing the President or the Immigration folks over the next two years because of the unfairness?
By 2017, with a Republican President deeply into the White House, with a Republican Senate and Republican House....the Supreme Court will get this episode of “unfairness”. What do you think they will say or do?
They could very well say that it was totally unfair, and then direct immigration to accept the remaining twenty-odd million, with the Republican President and his associates standing there in a huge fit of frustration....unable to stop this element of “fairness” from taking place.
I suspect....this is the whole game being planned out, and to put a total loss of faith onto the Republicans by the public.
Open borders work both ways, annex Mexico, clean out the corrupt drug lords and install a military dictatorship run by the US government. PS: Suck the oil dry.
“The biggest problems that we’re facing right now have to do with George Bush trying to bring more and more power into the Executive Branch and not go through Congress at all, and that’s what I intend to reverse when I’m President of the United States of America.”
Obama 2008
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.