Thread: Immigration: Fight against Obama’s lawlessness just beginning

By Jay Sekulow
Published December 19, 2014
FoxNews.com

When it comes to confronting President Obama’s lawless immigration actions, we’ve only just begun to fight.

Earlier this month, I testified before the House Judiciary Committee, spelling out exactly how President Obama’s immigration actions violated the Constitution.

Public testimony plays a critical role in educating members of Congress and educating the public, but testimony alone can’t stop President Obama. Stopping the president requires legal and legislative action.

Let’s reform our immigration system, but let’s do it according to a constitutional process. President Obama claims he’s acting because Congress has “failed” to act. But what he really means is that he’s acting because Congress has failed to give him exactly what he wants.

That’s why my colleagues and I at the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) Tuesday joined with 27 members of Congress and more than 60,000 Americans to file an amicus brief in the leading lawsuit against President Obama’s immigration actions. We’re joining 24 states in challenging the president, and our arguments are clear.

The Constitution clearly vests in Congress the exclusive authority to make law and set immigration policies. Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution declares that Congress has the power to “establish a uniform Rule of Naturalization” -- not the president.

And Congress has acted in accordance with that authority, drafting statute after statute regulating immigration and creating a truly comprehensive legal scheme. Under the appropriate Constitutional framework, when Congress has spoken this clearly, a president’s ability to draft executive orders that at all contradict this Congressional intent is at its “lowest ebb.”

And let’s be clear—that’s exactly what President Obama did. He, to use his own words, “took an action to change the law.” He contradicted Congress.

Moreover, the president can’t justify his new, sweeping program by claiming he’s merely exercising “prosecutorial discretion.” As his lawyers acknowledge, prosecutorial discretion typically involves a case-by-case analysis, setting enforcement priorities consistent with available resources and policy priorities.

Yet the president is creating a sweeping, class-based program that would provide automatic benefits to any person meeting the criteria. That’s not prosecutorial discretion, that’s new law.

And it’s unconstitutional.

I’m not the only one to think so. On Tuesday, a federal judge in Pennsylvania ruled that President Obama’s immigration action was unconstitutional, using much the same reasoning we outlined in our amicus brief.

The president’s immigration plan faces real legal jeopardy, but it also should face a clear Congressional challenge.

Next year will begin with a new Congress, a Congress with a clear conservative majority. It should place an immediate priority on defending the Constitution by defunding any Obama administration efforts to implement its sweeping, lawless immigration plan.

Under the so-called “CRomnibus” spending bill passed late last week, the Department of Homeland Security—the department responsible for immigration matters—is only funded through February 27. That gives the new Congress the ability to take a second look at immigration funding and impose its will on a lawless president.

Still, as we defend the Constitution, we need to make clear that being pro-Constitution is not the same as being anti-immigrant.

I’m the grandson of Russian immigrants, and I understand that America is the hope of the world in so many ways. I believe in the promises engraved on the Statue of Liberty that we want to welcome those who yearn to be free.

The process, however, must be lawful. Impatient presidents do not get to violate the Constitution, and immigration actions that fail to address true border security will never offer a long-term solution.

So, yes, let’s reform our immigration system, but let’s do it according to a constitutional process. The president claims he’s acting because Congress has “failed” to act. But what he really means is that he’s acting because Congress has failed to give him exactly what he wants.

That’s what kings do, not presidents. The American system of separation of powers exists for very good reasons, so that no one person or branch can assume all the powers that European kings traditionally exercised.

Yes, constitutional processes can be frustrating. And, no, they are not always efficient. But they keep us free.

And that’s why we have to fight—not out of malice for immigrants but out of respect for our Constitution -- the document that is responsible for creating the very country that immigrants long to join.

Jay Sekulow is Chief Counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), which focuses on constitutional law. He is author of the New York Times bestseller, "Rise of ISIS: A Threat We Can't Ignore." He hosts "Jay Sekulow Live" -- a daily radio show which is broadcast on more than 850 stations nationwide as well as Sirius/XM satellite radio..

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2014/...ness-heats-up/

Still, as we defend the Constitution, we need to make clear that being pro-Constitution is not the same as being anti-immigrant.

I’m the grandson of Russian immigrants, and I understand that America is the hope of the world in so many ways. I believe in the promises engraved on the Statue of Liberty that we want to welcome those who yearn to be free.

Oh man, you were doing pretty well, Jay, until you had to throw in this crap and show your ignorance. There is no "promise" engraved on the Statue of Liberty. That is a poem written by a private citizen, a Zionist activist in fact, who died young from disease and when the private organization in New York planning the site and ceremony for the gift from France had a competition for something to engrave on the Statue Pedestal, her father thought a portion of one of her poems might be nice on the Statue. The words on the Statue of Liberty have nothing to do with the Statue, nothing to do with our law, nothing to do with what Americans want or need, or even think or feel about immigration. This was a little group of New York City elitists who even then had no positions with regards to immigration policy, it was just an impressive little poem that they thought fit the art of the Statue, because they didn't understand the purpose of the torch, which isn't even a US Statue, but a gift from France. Americans were so uninterested in the project that the committee couldn't even raise the money for the pedestal until Joseph Pulitzer started a fund drive and raised enough to finish it.

The Statue was never a government project, never a "we the people" undertaking, has nothing to do with the people of the United States at large, and the torch is not a "welcome to immigrants" as fools claim, it was a shining light of freedom, a beacon to other nations to follow our way of freedom in their own lands, not barge in here to find it. The collective misunderstanding about the Statue of Liberty and the stupid banter that goes on about it and this stupid wrongfully placed poem is bad enough for the average person who may not know the truth about it, but for supposedly well-educated opinion leaders such as you and those who should know the truth about matters before they speak about them to display they haven't a clue is truly nauseating.

So tell me, Jay, if you win your lawsuit against Obama, what stand will you take when Congress increases green card visas and expands legal immigration? It sounds to me like you're all for that. Well let me explain to your uninformed butt, it doesn't make any difference to an unemployed/underemployed American worker or an American business that can't compete with businesses hiring immigrants, whether they lost the jobs, wages or businesses to 40 million legal immigrants or 20 million illegal aliens or some combination of the two, because the economic loss is the same.

And I have no clue in the world where morons like you get the notion that Americans are "welcoming". We are not and have never been "welcoming". We are suspicious, distrustful, cliquey, and really don't like waves of strangers entering our territory to steal our jobs, deflate our wages, undercut our businesses, run up the tax tab and when we can't pay it, run up our public debt. We never have and never will, and rightly so.

I feel that the powers of the U.S. may be purposely placing us upon a slippery slope. I am wary of the fight for respect of the constitution will at some point be used to misconstrue our intentions as approval of "comprehensive immigration reform."

Politicians are quite well known for manipulation of message(s). This is one ripe for that manipulation. Guardedly we must tread on this executive action, being careful that we cannot be misunderstood.

Buckle up folks.

IMO the real problem with the Repubs is that they're using 'Bama as cover for their selling out American interests. The Repubs big-money donor want surplus labor, to keep wages down and profits up.

Senators Cruz and Sessions are among the minority which is publicly defending American interests.

The Tea Party looks like the best best for supporting more pro-American candidates.
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