[shrug] What he said before is not in any way legally binding on him nor on the courts.
That doesn’t mean it’s not a flagrant abuse of power. For a lot of people, that would be a good indicator that it WAS one.
True . . . You know, I don’t like the phrase “illegal immigrants” because people are not illegal. OTOH, I don’t like “undocumented immigrants” because that implies they just failed to fill out some paperwork and all would be well if they had. I prefer “impermissive immigrants,” because they are in the country without the required official permission; and that phrase implies nothing about whether they would qualify for such permission or not.
It’s stupid and hypocritical, but not an abuse of power. Not because what Reagan and Bush did was the same, since it wasn’t. Because a President cannot be stopped from doing stupid and hypocritical things in all cases.
It’s like the Keystone [del]Kops[/del] pipeline. Obama and the Dems are playing naked politics. They just aren’t very good at it. They already lost the elections, badly, and Obama is the lamest of lame ducks. So go ahead and pull some stunts - how much worse could it be? The next Congress isn’t going to give him a chance to get away with this kind of stuff, and all the Democrats who survived the mid-terms are pretty safe seats, and won’t be hurt by going along with these shenanigans.
Regards,
Shodan
I don’t know whether it’s technically legal and am happy to leave that for law professors and judges*. But being legal doesn’t preclude it from being an abuse of power.
Obama may have found a loophole in the law, in that no one thought to outlaw a president simply refusing to enforce (or partially enforcing) a law that he doesn’t like. But the political system for the past few hundred years has been based on the notion that the president doesn’t do that. Once that precedent is breached, there’s no telling how it ends.
*[I’m a bit puzzled that a president can use “resource limitations” as justification for refusing to enforce the law when he’s pretty open about his motivations here and they are not resource limitations. But again, that’s a legal question.]
Just because you don’t have a legal option does not justify subverting the law to immigrate illegally.
I’ve been the immigrant and I’m now working on getting my fiancée through the US immigration system. I’ve seen both sides of the coin. I am not someone whinging from the sidelines. I’m standing in the proverbial line with my family and getting ready to watch 5 million+ people skip on ahead.
Then what would?
This isn’t really a new idea, though. It’s part of the foundations of the checks and balances system. Only Congress can pass laws and appropriate funds. The Executive branch executes the laws, and spends the money. The seed of this conflict was intentionally planted right there.
Now it’s true that there’s no nice and neat way to resolve conflicts in the checks and balances. When there is a conflict, it’s going to be messy.
These kinds of things have happened in the past. It’s hard to say how this particular incident measures up in terms of significance until we see how it all plays out. It could be that we talk about Congress v Obama for hundreds of years to come as a pivotal moment in Constitutional law, or it could be that it all blows over so that no one remembers it twenty years from now.
Personally, I think Obama is acting within the bounds of his office. BUT… I think he’s clearly made himself out to be untrustworthy. He’s spent years blaming Congress for inaction, claiming that he couldn’t do this. Now he’s blaming Congress for inaction as he goes ahead and does it anyway. I would have much more respect for him if his story had always been “I’d rather not use executive action now. Let’s wait for Congress a little longer.” That’s not what he said, though. You can’t have it both ways, Obama.
I don’t understand what you’re saying. The question at hand is what happens if the Executive branch does not execute the laws.
I imagine the Founding Fathers anticipated that the president would be impeached in such cases. But they apparently did not anticipate the political party faction system, in which a president not enforcing the laws would be carrying out the priorities of his party, and thus supported by an unimpeachible minority at least.
[This is not the first time Obama has done this type of thing, and he seems (to me at least) to have a predilection for it (e.g. Eric Holder deciding to not enforce the drug law mandatory sentences), not to mention granting waivers from laws when convenient.]
I see executing the laws to be one and the same with not executing them. Either way, the Executive branch choose what to to implement and how. Every day, District Attorneys at all levels of government make choices about which cases to prosecute or not. You can argue that each of these is an example of “not upholding the law” but that leeway helps the system to be efficient.
I’m especially used to this in the arena of federal taxation. We have so many layers of authority - the original law is interpreted by regulations, which are then supplemented by all kinds of procedures and rulings, etc. As a classic example: the tax deduction for the standard mileage rate appears nowhere in the tax law. It’s implemented by the IRS (Executive branch). The intent is to simplify the record-keeping otherwise required under the law, but it really is a game-changer for some people. The courts haven’t complained, and Congress hasn’t said they can’t, so it all kind of works out there.
So, yeah, I see all this as a “healthy” component of checks and balances. The ability of the Executive branch to refuse to follow a law is one component of that whole system. Again, any time we have to actually use checks and balances, there’s a lot of conflict and chaos, but at least we don’t expect it to end in civil war.
Your fiancee is from, where, the Caymans? Not really comparable to the Latin American immigrants that “immigration reform” really refers to, given the relative number of available “slots”. I’m a legal immigrant to the US but I’m from the UK. I didn’t have to play a lottery or cross a desert or something.
I wouldn’t argue that. The job of the district attorney is not “prosecute everyone”. It’s “use your discretion in deciding who to prosecute”, and if he does that he’s doing his proper role.
In this case, we’re talking about effectively rewriting the law by enforcing the law based on another set of criteria other than that which is actually specified in the law.
But I think your comparison is a good one. Suppose a DA disagrees with laws against marijuana - or, for that matter, the Violence Against Women Act, or whatever - and decides that he’s just not going to prosecute anyone for those crimes. You’re cool with that? “District Attorneys at all levels of government make choices about which cases to prosecute or not”.
That’s ambiguities in the law which are deliberately left for the regulators to clarify and define.
What “checks and balances” are in play here? What method does congress have to check or balance the president when he infringes on legislative turf?
Suppose the state speed limit is 55 mph. If a police chief instructs his officers to not bother stopping anyone on the highway unless they are going at least 60 mph, is that police chief exhibiting an unconstitutional abuse of power because he is effectively raising the speed limit to 60? Or is he just recognizing the reality that concentrating enforcement resources on those going less than 5 mph over the speed limit it not in the public interest.
This idea that there is a line and illegal immigrants are skipping ahead is one of the most idiotic ones from the immigration debate. There is no line, you are one of the god damn lucky few who have the option to bring their loved ones here legally, that you actually begrudge the same from people who risked their lives for a small chance at what you were allowed to do is utterly ridiculous. You are like a lottery winner complaining that people who worked themselves up from nothing don’t deserve what you have.
I don’t know. (I know that police typically give some slack but I don’t know if it’s an official policy or just ad hoc. In any event, I doubt if it’s about “public resources”, because the tickets probably pay for themselves.)
But how about you answer this? Suppose a police chief does not have an issue with public resources but simply thinks as a matter of policy the world would be a better place if people were allowed to go 60 MPH, and instructs his officers to use that number for that reason. Also OK?
Thread should have ended here.
My fiancée is from Colombia. She is exactly comparable to Latin American immigrants.
Your comment shows a lack of understanding of just how many appointments are necessary and how far in advance appointments must be made to navigate the legal process.
Obama cannot make more USCIS workers appear by magic. The way he gets enough workers to process the caseload brought on by his pronouncements is to redirect those workers from other matters. This results in longer delays for those already in line.
Just watch the available appointment dates change after applications start pouring in.
Every citizen of North Korea, Iraq, Mexico, Columbia, Somalia, and a host of other countries should be able to immigrate to the United States and become a legal citizen simply because they live in shitty countries. If they bypass the legal system of immigration in place, which allows more legal immigrants than every other nation in the world combined, then oh well, they get a pass for breaking the law because they live in shitty countries.
Thus is the logic of the bleeding heart, delusional liberal. It’s no better than the reverend’s wife screaming “but PLEASE won’t someone think of the children!” Their appeal to humanity trumps common sense and rational immigration policy. And then they want to call others racist and xenophobic for calling their stance irrational.
When it comes to immigration policy, the road to hell is paved with the good intentions of bleeding heart liberals. They want to pat themselves on the back and feel good about saving humanity. Common sense be damned.
Oh my god appointments, you poor thing. You are missing the point, you are still the lucky one here.