Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Two views on President Obama’s plan for executive action on immigration

Obama knows that this is a trap for Republicans. Their response should be to be to just move forward in a positive timely manner with an immigration bill.

  • New Republic -- Erwin Chemerinsky and San KleinerObama has the law - and Reagan - on his side on immigration

    “Indeed, presidents of both parties have tailored immigration policy to their own goals. In 1987, the Reagan administration took executive action to limit deportations for 200,000 Nicaraguan exiles, even those who had been turned down for asylum. Similarly, President George H.W. Bush in 1990 limited deportations of Chinese students and in 1991 kept hundreds of Kuwait citizens from being deported. President Bill Clinton regularly used his power of prosecutorial discretion to limit deportations; in 1993 he gave 18-month extensions to Salvadoran residents, in 1997 he limited deportations for Haitians, and in 1998 he limited deportations to Central American counties that had been devastated by hurricanes.”

    The president has the constitutional authority to decide to not proceed with deportations. It has always been within the president’s discretion to decide whether to have the Department of Justice enforce a particular law. As the Supreme Court declared in United States v. Nixon, “the Executive Branch has exclusive authority and absolute discretion to decide whether to prosecute a case.”

  • WSJ Opinion - Rep. Goodlatte (R) , Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee -- Congress will fight Obama’s Power Grab

    The president’s amnesty plan for millions of unlawful immigrants clearly violates the Constitution.

    “Mr. Obama’s plan to violate the Constitution must be stopped. The Framers wisely gave Congress many tools to guard against the executive branch accumulating too much power. My colleagues in both the House and the Senate will take inventory of the tools afforded to Congress by the Constitution, such as the power of the purse and the authority to write legislation, to stop the president’s unconstitutional actions from being implemented.”