Posted on 09/30/2014 1:49:17 PM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
The Obama administration is spending $4 million on lawyers for unaccompanied immigrant children in deportation proceedings, a move an influential Republican lawmaker says is illegal and will fuel an increase in illegal immigration.
Kenneth Wolfe, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services' said it is the first time the office that oversees programs for unaccompanied immigrant children will provide money for direct legal representation.
The grants to two organizations are part of a bigger $9 million project that aims to provide lawyers to 2,600 children.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
No - American taxpayers are being forced to pay for them.
And the rest of us...can just dig deep when we need a lawyuh.
How nice.
Nice GOP response. Point at Barry and shout “that’s illegal!” then drop it there.
Just why do they need lawyers? It sounds like they are all going in front of rubber stamp judges.
Were the funds being used appropriated for the purpose of defending illegal immigrants and their children??? Hmmmm?
There must be some way to stop this
First, politically correct interpretations of the Constitution’s Uniform Rule of Naturalization Clause (Article I, Section 8, Clause 4) aside, such interpretations used to justify federal immigration laws, the states have never delegated to the feds, expressly via the Constitution, the specific power to regulate immigration, immigration therefore a state power issue.
In fact, Thomas Jefferson had clarified, in terms of the 10th Amendment nonetheless, that immigration is uniquely a state power issue.
“4. _Resolved_, That alien friends are under the jurisdiction and protection of the laws of the State wherein they are: that no power over them has been delegated to the United States, nor prohibited to the individual States, distinct from their power over citizens. And it being true as a general principle, and one of the amendments to the Constitution having also declared, that “the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people,” the act of the Congress of the United States, passed on the — day of July, 1798, intituled “An Act concerning aliens,” which assumes powers over alien friends, not delegated by the Constitution, is not law, but is altogether void, and of no force [emphasis added].” —Thomas Jefferson, Draft of the Kentucky Resolutions - October 1798.
Next regarding the constitutionality of federal funding for immigration purposes, the Supreme Court has historically clarified that Congress is prohibited from laying taxes in the name of state power issues.
“Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States.” —Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
Since immigration is a state power issue, Congress has no power to appropriate funds to pay for legal counsel for illegal immigrants imo.
Next, although many citizens might think that illegal aliens are protected by constitutional rights, the 6th Amendment right to legal counsel in this case, the following excerpts indicate that illegal aliens aren't necessarily protected by constitutional rights.
Constitution's Article IV, Section 2, Clause 1: The Citizens of each State [emphasis added] shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States.
14th Amendment, Section 1: All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States [emphasis added]; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
“3. The right of suffrage was not necessarily one of the privileges or immunities of citizenship before the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, and that amendment does not add to these privileges and immunities. It simply furnishes additional guaranty for the protection of such as the citizen already had [emphases added].” —Minor v. Happersett, 1874.
As a side note concerning Congress's limited power to tax and spend mentioned above, please consider the following. As evidenced by James Madison's The Federalist Papers : No. 58, the Founding States had made the Constitution's Clause 1 of Section 7 of Article I, the "power of the purse" clause, to give the House of Respresentatives the power to stop any federal spending project that proved to be unpopular with the voters by simply defunding it.
The problem with the purse clause now is the following. Obama's first Democratic-controlled Congress unthinkingly defeated the Founders' purpose for the clause when they foolishly passed the constitutionally indefensible Stimulus Program and likewise constitutionally indefensible Obamacare Democratcare. By doing so they essentially gave Obama a blank check that he could spend on any constitutionally objectionable program he wants to, like paying for legal counsel for illegal immigrants, Congress now powerless to stop him.
I didn’t know that they were even showing up for court dates?
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