From The Weekly Standard:
GOP Senator: Obama To ‘Effectively End Immigration Enforcement’
The Obama administration is preparing to effectively “nullify” the immigration laws of the United States through an executive action, says one Republican senator. As Time reported Thursday, President Obama appears prepared to provide millions of illegal immigrants living in the U.S. work authorization via executive orders:
When President Obama issues executive orders on immigration in coming weeks, pro-reform activists are expecting something dramatic: temporary relief from deportation and work authorization for perhaps several million undocumented immigrants. If the activists are right, the sweeping move would upend a contentious policy fight and carry broad political consequences.
The activists met privately with the President and his aides June 30 at the White House, and say in that meeting Obama suggested he will act before the November midterm elections. They hope his decision will offer relief to a significant percentage of the estimated 11.7 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. “He seems resolute that he’s going to go big and go soon,” says Frank Sharry, executive director of the pro-reform group America’s Voice.
But Alabama senator Jeff Sessions, a Republican, says in a statement that the “temporary relief from deportation” would be a de facto ending of immigration enforcement:
It has now been extensively reported that these executive actions will likely expand his Deferred Action program (DACA) to apply to an additional 5–6 million adult illegal immigrants. The existing DACA program has been widely misunderstood. The executive action did not, as The Hill writes today, only result in ‘deferred deportations for young undocumented immigrants.’ Illegal immigrants in the interior of the U.S. have already, as a practical matter, been immune from enforcement under this Administration. DACA applies to individuals up to 30 years of age and provides actual amnesty papers, photo ID, and work permits to illegal immigrants—who can then take any job in America.
The President’s planned executive orders would expand this permitting program to another 5–6 million illegal immigrants. This would effectively end immigration enforcement in America.
Sessions goes on to urge Americans to call on their elected members of Congress to not support any bill dealing with the current border crisis that does not “block” the Obama administration’s executive actions.
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Obama is simply importing future Democratic voters for Texas. Once Texas’ 38 electoral votes go Democratic, the Republicans will never win another Presidential election. It will be mathematically impossible for Republicans to win. In short, all this is about securing a future for the two high sacraments of the Democratic Party: abortion and homosexuality. Meanwhile, the Republicans and the bishops fiddle.
The interesting point is here when non-enforcements of laws actually qualifies as a failure to uphold and defend the constitution of the United States. Is that point reached when constitutional laws are not upheld, or only when then the text of the constitution itself is violated?
In the first case, such an executive order would be a violation of his oath of office, and hence an impeachable crime. In the second case, Congress can still of course try to impeach, but would struggle to define what crime Obama would actually have committed. bad policy, even disasterously bad policy, is after all no crime and therefore, in principle, not grounds for impeachment. (Not that I see impeachment as realistic, but the question arises if the attempt should be made. Fighting the good fight sometimes has to be done even if the odds of prevailing are zero)
Given the fact that any government would reasonable expect to have some leeway on enforcement, and exercises that leeway, I fear we might eventually have to chalk this one as a win for the Ds. And be sure, it is the major problem of the times. Here in Europe we still regret the mistakes of a permissive immigration policy in the 60s and 70s (and again in the 80s and 90s…). Immigration causes problems that take generations to solve, if they ever are.
I can only be a spectator in this, but Ihope, for the sake of the US and the world, that 2016 will be the moment to rescue what’s still rescuable.
I found this comment on another blog. Hopefully, posting it doesn’t violate any strictures, but I cannot tell a lie–I think it needed saying:
Subotai Bahadur
“It is time to ponder what the response of the half of the population who are Citizens and not Subjects will be. If he successfully throws open the border [destroying American status as a sovereign nation], and by Executive Order continues seizing power that is not the president’s under the Constitution, and we know that the Institutional Republicans will go along with it with only pretend protest; there are questions that will have to be answered fairly quickly.
1) What duty of loyalty and obedience to the State is owed by Citizens in the absence of the Constitution having any force?
2) What is the proper response to a State that attempts to rule with no consent of the governed?
3) What should be done to cope with the existence of the 1/2 of the population who are willing Subjects of the State, and who intend to reduce us to Subjects?
4) What means shall be used by Citizens to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.?”
Discuss.
…Frogs. Increasingly hot water.
It is the attempt, getting more successful all the time, to turn America into the northern Brazil, a true third world mess. And one that grows ever less Catholic at the same time.
We owe these people nothing, not in the way the left and the Catholic Church imply. Fact is that no more than 20% of those recently streaming across the southern border are actual children, 80%+ are 16 and up, shows that the Catholic Bishops in America are part of the lie. And willing accomplices in wrecking the nation, as too many other so-called Christian groups are willing. But these other groups, knowing how little attachment the Catholic Church has on many of these illegals, are only too glad to help them stay here. They know that the majority who will go to some church will not go to Catholic Church. But will sooner rather than later join Pentecostal, Evangelical, whatever, but not Catholic churches. If the vast majority were loyal Catholics, does anyone believe the Protestant majority, which is anything other than Catholic in what I am saying here, that they would be welcoming these hordes? They’d be at the front line opposing these illegals! But they see how things are going; it is the Catholic Bishops, thinking they’ll fill emptying pews with mass immigration from Latin America. Wrong. And even if that were right, it would still be wrong. Or how many illegals does Vatican City want to take in? How many personally do the bishops take into their homes?
The Catholic Church, taking billions from the US Government, must then do the bidding of that government. SCOTUS says so, which is why several colleges, Hillsdale being the first, stopped taking any federal $$$$, so they could maintain total independence. You take the king’s shilling, you are the king’s man. And the US Catholic Church is ever increasingly a tool of Washington, D.C. There will be strings attached
Your comment is exactly right, excalibur.
Barack Hussein Obama does not execute the laws we have in America. He is lawless.
It is disturbing that some (many?) bishops seem to give as much consideration to CCC 2241 as does Obama to the Constitution.
Change he has certainly brought. These changes are reshaping the country just as Obama and Hillary have desired for decades: toward socialism, bolstered by hordes of illiterate illegals who will be granted citizenship, along with free everything, on the backs of those who still work for a living.
Obama shuts down border control, then chastises Congress for possibly leaving the swamp in August, without having spent still more money on securing the border. So now it’s the fault of Congress? Obama tells ICE to stand down, and then blames the Congress? Twilight Zone….
And like Sgt. Schultz, the MSM sees nothing… nothing, that is, but the slightest misstep by any conservative. Or priest.
Listening to Relevant Radio last week, Monsignor Swetland out and out said that we should disobey immigration law and applauded these illegals for ignoring our laws. I can’t imagine people so callously disregarding the rule of law and really supporting a dictatorship that is not accountable to anybody with respect to the most powerful country/government apparatus on the planet. When this bureaucracy goes rouge such as happened in Nazi Germany, what kind of misery and bloodshed do these Catholics think will ensue? Do they even think? This is very dangerous.
Also, wmeyer, here is the full paragraph:
“2241 The more prosperous nations are obliged, to the extent they are able, to welcome the foreigner in search of the security and the means of livelihood which he cannot find in his country of origin. Public authorities should see to it that the natural right is respected that places a guest under the protection of those who receive him.
Political authorities, for the sake of the common good for which they are responsible, may make the exercise of the right to immigrate subject to various juridical conditions, especially with regard to the immigrants’ duties toward their country of adoption. Immigrants are obliged to respect with gratitude the material and spiritual heritage of the country that receives them, to obey its laws and to assist in carrying civic burdens.”
This clearly states the immigrants’ obligations too. “immigrants’ duties towards their country.” Respect our heritage. Obey our laws. And assist in carrying civic burdens. I hardly think receiving public welfare is “carrying a civic burden” but more like “increasing civic burden” on the rest of us. Not Catholic at all…
Dienekes,
I have been contemplating the content of some of your points for some time; I’m rather worried by the conclusions I’ve reached.
President Obama seems to be quite determined that he’ll use whatever means are necessary to enact his views, even if half the country clearly opposes him. Depending on what he tries to demand of the People and what the People will tolerate, there’s a chance that armed conflict may break out somewhere. If that happens, the aftermath could be almost as dangerous to the nation as the current circumstance.
As I consider the alternatives, the only other option I can conceive would for people to refuse to abide by the President’s wishes. …and be willing to suffer arrest and/or harassment for doing so.
Intense suffering of We, the People could be right around the corner. I hope We are ready.
excaliber,
As I commented under another post, I’ve never been comfortable with Catholic agencies accepting federal (or state or local) dollars. I have generally considered doing so to be an act that fundamentally negates one’s status as a charitable provider, causing one to be mostly a paid social services provider by another name. I think it possible that we’ll be forced to suffer a great deal before the Church, in it’s human element, comes to understand what that means.
In the meantime, let’s be careful to remember that what’s going on now is certainly an effort being authorized–or tolerated at least–by bishops, but by being so, this does not mean that it’s something that the Catholic Church approves. I am inclined toward thinking that such actions are rather an abuse of Catholic teaching, but too many do not wish to consider that notion.
We may, as a faithful people and nation, be forced to suffer for the errors of many.
Let’s pray that we’ll at least manage to drag a few people to heaven in the process.
I’m not a fan of the President, nor did I vote for him, but is the SA Obama really necessary?
This feels like a trial balloon to entice the GOP into either (a) undertaking an impeachment effort that will fail before the election or (b) campaigning on impeachment and failing to achieve the 60% Senate majority that would be required to remove Obama from office.
Whether or not either of those things happens, the specter looms of a completely naked executive power grab come the morning of November 5. And in light of that non-trivial possibility, the SA image is by no means outrageous.
America as we know it has a little over three months left. Much prayer is called for.
Impeachment is not a practical possibility as long as Senate Democrats fail to see that by not defending their own proper constitutional authority they risk going the way of the Roman Senate under the Caesars. There are basically no more statesmen (stateswomen) in Congress, at least not in the Democratic Party. Initially Democratic Congress critters were appalled by the actions of the IRS, for example. Obvious somebody got to them because in mere weeks the IRS abuse of power became just another partisan issue. The same with all the other scandals. Initially moderate, or even more liberal Democrats publicly speak out, then all of a sudden they either quiet down or 180 on the issue. One can only imagine what Reid & Pelosi must have on them. Or is it that the DNC has such a stranglehold on campaign funds that no democrat seeking reelection is willing to take the chance of being cut off from funds?
I have never seen such a march of Lemmings by politicians acting against their own self and national interests.