It would, however, be accurate to say that the “courts” blocked his executive action.
Correct me if I’m wrong, didn’t the 5th circuit decide the case primarily on the administration using the wrong process to implement this? Couldn’t that be corrected fairly easily by just publishing the orders and allowing for a period of comment?
This will be a temporary setback. President H Clinton will appoint Scalia’s successor who will break up the deadlock and then when Thomas retires, she will name a replacement as insurance for a liberal majority.
You can’t step away from the partisan sniping for a second, can you?
While I believe that Obama can prioritize deportations however he wants, it was clear to me after listening to the arguments in the case that his executive order did more than that; it granted legal standing to those that were allowed to remain in the country. While I support President Obama and agree with the tack he has taken with regards to immigrants, he does not have the power to confer a legal status willy-nilly.
Nonsense. “Pushing the envelope” is inevitable and essential to a healthy nation and body politic. And the very reason we have a judiciary.
It would be nice if Congress would “push the envelope” right back at the Oval Office, for instance insisting on its Constitional authority to declare war, rather than passively submitting to one President after another who commit troops for open-ended military conflicts.
Actually, the decision underscores the importance of a President not being arrogant enough to think he can unilaterally take actions using powers he does not have. And it may be a bit premature to think that any President can pack the Supreme Court with justices who will fall in line with interpreting the Constitution to let Presidents do what they want.
Deferred action is a legal limbo which in itself grants no path to a more permanent legal status. It does provide a path to employment authorization, which in turn normally provides a path to a Social Security number, driver’s license, etc. Even the plaintiffs’ brief acknowledged that the executive branch has the legal authority to prioritize among categories of people theoretically subject to immigration enforcement; the two sides merely disagreed on the method employed by DAPA and expanded DACA.
(I’d post links, but not from my ipad in the lunchroom, and as you can imagine it’s been a little nutty in my office.)
Eva Luna, Immigration Paralegal
I’m in favor of the immigration policy Obama is trying to implement, but it does seem like the lower court got it right here. It’s not within his powers.
It’s one thing for him to tell INS to focus its efforts toward certain people and away from others; there are more people that could legally be deported than we currently have resources to deport. It’s another entirely to suggest that they be granted working papers.
Deferred action in immigration matters has been around for decades, and it comes with eligibility to apply for employment authorization. In fact, even people who have been ordered deported from the United States but currently have a stay of deportation or order of supervision are eligible to apply for employment authorization if they can show that they have financial need and/or are supporting family members who have financial need (which basically everyone can do).
Deferred action has been granted on a case-by-case basis basically forever. The only new thing about DAPA and expanded DACA was the number of people potentially affected. Check out some of the amicus briefs.
And here’s the brief in which the Attorney General of Texas acknowledges that the President has the legal authority to develop priorities for deciding which deportation cases to pursue; the disagreement is primarily about how the Obama administration chose to implement those priorities.
Every single one of the people potentially affected by DAPA and expanded DACA has the right to due process and his/her day in court. Given current resource levels in the judiciary system and at ICE, it would literally take decades to adjudicate all those cases, and under current law every one of those people would have the right to employment authorization while their cases were pending.
How many Federal resources would it take to deal with that kind of gridlock, and to what useful end?
And then the next Republican President can cut taxes by executive order! Yay!
If that was true, only the judiciary would have its members take an oath to defend the Constitution. All three branches are obligated to abide by our Supreme Law.
Sure, but all three branches can (and do!) push at the boundaries of constitutionality.
The War Powers Act is a lovely example. You can say it re-affirms the Congress’s right to declare war, by limiting the President’s ability to start a war all on his own. But the President can say that it is unconstitutional (several Presidents have said that) because it limits his power as Commander in Chief.
So: straight up: can the President order an artillery piece to fire across the border into Canada? As Commander in Chief, yes, he can. But since that would start a war, which only Congress can declare, no, he can’t.
The Constitution is a framework, but there are some details that simply are not specified.
Yes. It’s human nature. People tend to feel far more strongly about particular issues and what can be done about them than about technical matters of law that limit the responses to those issues.
Yep. Presidential impoundment of funds was another one from the same time period. The thing is, Presidents actually do have the power to not spend money to some extent, just as Presidents have the power to not enforce laws to some extent. I often compare the immigration executive order to Nixon’s impoundment because it pushed the concept too far, to the point where Congress could almost be considered meaningless.
No question. But limits are tested far too often. Presidents shouldn’t be trying to do things like detain American citizens for extended periods without trial, or the opposite, not bothering to arrest blatant lawbreakers at all. Defining Presidential power that broadly makes Congress meaningless except for spending money, and then only because Congress won the impoundment battle. And Congress itself should not be passing laws that are questionable. McCain-Feingold was known to be deficient at the time it was voted on and they passed it anyway. Same goes for many parts of ACA. Rule of law matters and these types of actions give the strong impression that we are a banana republic, with the three branches vying for power by any questionable legal-seeming means at hand.
Well, IIRC Romney proposed that he would direct the IRS to not use resources to enforce collection of ACA non-compliance penalties (which had been found by SCOTUS to be a tax, if I had been paying attention), so it could be argued that this is the case.
However, since there will never be another Republican President, the question appears to be moot.
Only in your wild imagination.