--His action does nothing to disincentivize the coming of yet more illegals.
--It may overstep his authority as Executive, and therefore be unconstitutional.
--The timing is, to say the least, quite suspect.
I'll deal with each issue in turn.
The first problem has to do with the fact that the borders are still not secure, and there is nothing in the way of policy that imposes penalties for continuing to violate those borders. What the order does, effectively, is shield those millions from threat of deportation while permitting them to attempt to find work here. This is tantamount to rewarding them for having broken the law in the first place, not to mention for having jumped in line before many other immigrants who have taken the time and trouble to go through the legal process, to learn English and American customs, and to attempt to integrate more fully into society.
Predictably, there has been some Republican outrage over the matter, which will be addressed more fully in the "suspect timing" comment below. Here, I'm concerned with the liberal response to this outrage. Henry Fernandez at MSNBC argues that Obama has "both precedent and law on his side." Dale Hansen, in his Huffington Post blog report, asserts that Republican outrage is "misplaced":
Some people are suggesting that by taking such action, Obama is acting like a king or a dictator, despite the fact that Obama has actually used executive orders at lower rates than most of his predecessors.
Faced with this reality, some Republicans claim that it's not how often Obama uses this power but that his actions are unconstitutional or an unprecedented overreach of his power.
The reality is that every president over the last six decades have shielded groups here illegally from deportation. This order may protect more people than usual, but according to legal scholars it is not illegal, unconstitutional, or unprecedented.
In following up on his claim, I checked two of his sources: Every Immigration-Related Executive Action of the Last 58 Years and Legal scholars argue Obama's immigration actions are lawful, constitutional.
There is at least one obvious problem with each source. In the first instance, a comparison of the executive orders, on a case-by-case basis, reveals two factors common to previous EOs and absent in this one. In each prior case, the "amnesty" was issued to a narrow segment of the illegal population, and always in the context of political refuge; and in several notable cases, particularly the Reagan "amnesty" to which liberals frequently compare Obama's, the executive order merely expanded on an already legislatively-passed legal amnesty. Politifact notes with glee that Reagan "did the A-word," but fails to acknowledge that Reagan was in fact signing into law the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, which was a piece of bipartisan legislation...not an executive order. By contrast, the "extended voluntary departure" that he granted to some groups--such as Poles, after Poland imposed martial law--falls under an existing State Department directive permitting the executive to withhold deportation proceedings for specified populations until conditions in their home nations improve.
You'll note from the 58-year chart that prior EOs are specific to Poles, Russians, Vietnamese, Cubans, Ugandans, Ethiopians, and other groups fleeing oppressive communist governments and the miserable social and economic conditions those governments imposed. None of these was a "blanket" form of amnesty intended to grant permanent residence privileges to anybody and everybody who had crossed our border illegally.
So Obama's amnesty is not like those imposed by previous Presidents, which worked within the framework of existing laws. What we seem to have here, as was the case with his unilateral delaying of key provisions of the ACA after it had become law, is an executive issuing law, and therefore treading on legislative authority.
The second source provided by Hansen asserts that some 135 Constitutional scholars have issued a statement indicating they do not find fault with Obama's action. Unfortunately, the source does not provide the statement for review, nor list any of the authors. There is nothing in the AP report to indicate the ideological leanings of those issuing the statement, nor anything in the way of a dissenting opinion from any other Constitutional scholars. The report seems to be declaring that American legal scholars agree with Obama, and nobody disagrees.
I'm not convinced. I'm not prepared to declare that what he is doing is thoroughly illegal, although to borrow a phrase from the MSNBC article, such illegality on his part is "not without precedent." I would love to read those scholars' position in detail, and follow up with positions of other scholars not deemed worthy of mention by AP, MSNBC, or Huffington, before arriving at a firm opinion.
I do, however, have very firm opinion regarding the timing of Obama's announcement. Within days of the 2014 elections, which demonstrated a thorough national repudiation of the Democrats and the Obama agenda, he appeared on television to justify his executive order, and to argue that it was necessary due to inaction on the part of Congressional Republicans.
Let me reiterate this. Although immigration reform has been a hot topic in American politics for the past several years, and although the Republicans took the Senate, increased their grip on the House of Representatives, and claimed several governorships and state legislatures, the Obama administration believes that the people of this country are not to be trusted, and that our vote was not a referendum on himself and his policies...despite his campaigning on the basis of "make no mistake: these policies are on the ballot." Obama is unwilling to provide the Republicans any time to provide an immigration-reform solution of their own. This amnesty isn't humanitarian; it's political. He is leveraging the debate for political capital to bank in the Democrats' accounts. I've absolutely no doubt that he had this plan, and the announcement, stored up well in advance of the elections, and that had the Democrats instead prevailed, even now immigration reform, Dem style, would be churning its way through both chambers of Congress.
That's not honest. It's not ethical. Rather than accepting graciously that "these policies" have been rebuked, and that it's now the Republicans' turn to deal with illegal immigration and everything else, Obama is pandering to the illegal segment of our population, the very same segment whose (illegal) votes and (illegal) participation in social programs the Republicans have been attempting to prevent.
It's neither honest nor ethical, but it is quite Democratic. And it's very much Obama.
No comments:
Post a Comment