Obama’s Amnesty-By-Fiat: Naked Lawlessness
[NOTE: We had not intended to post more on this nettlesome issue after recently issuing several impassioned statements about it here and at other blogs, but our friend AOW, who thinks differently on The Dream Act, brought this article to our attention. It‘s a logical, remarkably clear-headed, dispassionate statement opposing a purely humanistic approach to the law, and as such, because we wish to make every attempt to be fair-minded and give all legitimate points of view a chance to be examined, we realized it ought to be shared in a condensed version here with emphasis added. - FreeThinke]
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| The Trail of Tears begins |
by Charles Krauthammer
June 21, 2012 - The Washington Post
”With respect to the notion that I can just suspend deportations [of immigrants brought here illegally as children] through executive order, that’s just not the case, because there are laws on the books that Congress has passed.”
~ President Obama, March 28, 2011
Those laws remain on the books. They have not changed. Yet Obama last week suspended them ... thereby unilaterally rewriting the law –– i.e. doing precisely what he admits he is barred from doing.
Obama had tried to change the law. In late 2010, he asked Congress to pass the Dream Act ... Congress refused.
When subsequently pressed by Hispanic groups to implement the law by executive action, Obama explained that it would be illegal”
“Now, I know some people want me to bypass Congress and change the laws on my own. . . . But that’s not how our system works. That’s not how our democracy functions. That’s not how our Constitution is written.”
~ President Obama
That was then. Now he’s gone and done it anyway. It’s obvious why. The election approaches and his margin is slipping ... this is the perfect pander [to the Hispanic community]. After all, who will call him on it? A supine press? Congressional Democrats? [Spineless Republican lawmakers afraid they might alienate some splinter faction or other?] Nothing like an upcoming election to temper their Bush 43-era zeal for defending Congress’s exclusive Article I power to legislate.
With a single Homeland Security Department memo, the immigration laws no longer apply to 800,000 people. By what justification?
Prosecutorial discretion, says Janet Napolitano.
This is utter nonsense. Prosecutorial discretion is the application on a case-by-case basis of considerations of extreme and extenuating circumstances ... The Napolitano memo is nothing of the sort. It’s the unilateral creation of a new category of persons ... who are hereby [suddenly] exempt from current law ...
This is not discretion. This is a fundamental rewriting of the law.
Imagine: A Republican president submits to Congress a bill abolishing the capital gains tax. Congress rejects it. The president then orders the IRS to stop collecting capital gains taxes and declares that anyone refusing to pay them will suffer no ... penalty ... whatsoever. (Analogy first suggested by law professor John Yoo.)
It would be ... a cause for impeachment. Why? Because unlike, for example, war powers, [Immigration law] is not an area of perpetual territorial contention [between the legislative and the executive] ... an area where the law is silent or ambiguous. Capital gains is straightforward tax law. Just as Obama’s bombshell amnesty-by-fiat is a subversion of straightforward immigration law.
It is shameful that ... Democrats are applauding [this]. Of course it’s smart politics. It divides Republicans, rallies the Hispanic vote and preempts Marco Rubio’s attempt to hammer out an acceptable legislative compromise. Very clever! But, ... it is [still] naked lawlessness.
... I sympathize with the obvious humanitarian motives of the Dream Act. But two important considerations are overlooked in concentrating exclusively on [humanitarian concerns].
FIRST: Offering potential illegal immigrants the prospect that, if they can hide ... long enough, their children will ... freely enjoy the bounties of American life creates a huge incentive for [further] illegal immigration.
SECOND: The case for compassion and fairness is hardly as clear-cut as advertised. What about those who languish for years in godforsaken countries awaiting legal admission to America? Their scrupulousness about the law could easily cost their children the American future that illegal immigrants will have secured for theirs.
... [W]hat holds us together is a shared allegiance to our constitutional order. That’s the fundamental issue here. ...
Read Mr. Krauthammer’s complete article here:
We disagree with Mr. Krauthammer’s argument against the compassionate, humanitarian approach not because we approve of President Obama’s shameless, cynically self-serving pandering, but because we cannot subscribe to any action that has the potential to uproot and probably destroy pleasantly settled lives of innocent people who have already assimilated to our way of life, and are doing us no active harm whatsoever.
As we said earlier, to stage what-would-amount-to a pogrom in order to meet the requirements of an unjust law would be tantamount to creating another Trail of Tears.
~ FreeThinke
@ innocent people who have already assimilated to our way of life, and are doing us no active harm whatsoever.
ReplyDeleteYou are 22 years old and in college, your parents knock over a bank and buy you a Ferrari as a graduation present. Your parents subsequently get caught... do you get to keep the car because you are an "innocent person"?
There are a couple of possible scenarios that may stem from the situation you discuss.
1. The person is truely innocent and has no idea his parents are here illegally.
2. The person was once innocent and subseqently found out his parents where here illegally.
3. The person was complicit and aware of the illegal immigration.
Only case 1 is truly innocent, and probably only a small number of the total cases in question.
The point is this... if you know your parents are illegal immigrants you most likely could be found guilty of violating 8 USC 1324 (a)(1)
(ii)knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that an alien has come to, entered, or remains in the United States in violation of law, transports, or moves or attempts to transport or move such alien within the United States by means of transportation or otherwise, in furtherance of such violation of law;
(iii)knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that an alien has come to, entered, or remains in the United States in violation of law, conceals, harbors, or shields from detection, or attempts to conceal, harbor, or shield from detection, such alien in any place, including any building or any means of transportation;
Shall be punished:
(ii)in the case of a violation of subparagraph (A)(ii), (iii), (iv), or (v)(II), be fined under title 18, imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both;
There are other, harsher punishments if done so for commercial gain, or if the alien has commited other crimes.
Mind you I'm not commenting on the legitimacy or fairness of the law, just the law itself. Your concept of innocence seems to be quite a stretch.
Cheers!
I still couldn't help but gasp at that part about the capital gains tax.
ReplyDeleteI suppose that it is "the right thing to do" in the eyes of many to redistribute the wealth, that is, Obama could, if unrestrained, restructure the capital gains tax (or a number of other things) by announcing a fiat of some sort. Then, what?
Could Obama not order that this new class of illegal immigrants, a class that he just created, vote in November? If not, why not? I have no bout that he would like to do exactly that!
The immigration mess we have on our hands is a nettlesome issue, indeed! No disagreement there from me. How did we get into this mess in the first place? I have a few ideas on that, but need to do more research on the topic.
BTW, I personally know of no "pogroms" here in this area. The children of illegals are in all the public schools -- an open secret. Nothing is done.
ReplyDelete