Amnesty by executive fiat? Is that even legal?

Can a president really just say “I know the law reads a certain way, but I don’t like it, so I’m going to issue an executive order to change it”?

Having had a few hours to digest the bypassing of Congress to inflict the DREAM ACT on America, I have a few comments and questions.

My first comment is to the girl on the right in this photo:

I don’t know.  What does an illegal alien look like?  Since illegal aliens come from many dozens of different countries, there is no “look” associated with them.  “Illegal alien” is a legal status, not a race or ethnicity.  To say they all look the same is like saying all felons look the same.  There’s plenty of room for everybody on the Criminal Train.

My next comment is that this order definitely gives Obama a certain “look.”  He looks duplicitous, and like a hypocrite.  In May of 2011, he opined that “There are enough laws on the books by Congress that are very clear in terms of how we have to enforce our immigration system that for me to simply, through executive order, ignore those congressional mandates would not conform with my appropriate role as President.”  What changed between then and now?  Did Obama find a Cloak Of Duplicity in his closet or something?

After the BarryCare oral arguments, Obama declared, “Ultimately I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.”  Leaving aside the fact that there was no “strong majority,” why is it okay for one man to ignore the will of Congress when it comes to immigration, but not okay for nine Justices to do so when the will of Congress involves an unconstitutional law?  That’s enough hypocrisy to choke an elephant.

That brings me to a question.  How does giving work visas to illegal aliens square with the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996?  The law is quite specific about the process for correcting one’s status.  It states that aliens unlawfully present in the United States for 180 days but less than 365 days must remain outside the United States for three years unless they obtain a pardon. If they are in the United States for 365 days or more, they must stay outside the United States for ten years unless they obtain a waiver. If they return to the United States without the pardon, they may not apply for a waiver for a period of ten years.  In a nutshell, ya gotta leave to fix your status.  So is Obama going to wave his Magic Pardon And Waiver Wand and make the 1996 law go away?

If he can do that, then when Mitt is elected in November, can he gut BarryCare via executive order?  In this new paradigm, with a mere stroke of a pen, he can say that he will be using his “discretion” to allocate no resources towards enforcement.  Voilà!  It will be like the law never passed.  (He may not get the chance, of course, because the Supremes might beat him to it.  But you catch my drift.)

Let us turn to eligibility.  Seems the standards have slipped from the original DREAM idea of requiring the young illegal aliens to have served in the military or attended college.  Under the new CRAP – Criminal Rendering of Amnesty by the President – it’s the military, or a high school diploma or GED.  Considering that a lot of high school graduates are roughly as smart as a dead bonsai tree, it would have been better to require a degree from a four-year university.

Further, CRAP (yes, I made it up, but I like it, so it gets to stay) requires the illegal aliens to not be law-breakers.  Will this exclude illegal aliens who committed fraud by providing false and/or stolen information and identification to obtain employment?  I read an article about an illegal alien who started a business, and employs several other illegal aliens.  Knowingly hiring illegal aliens is a crime.  Will she be eligible for CRAP?  How about illegal aliens who worked under the table and didn’t pay their taxes?  That, too, is a crime.  Are those people of the “good moral character” that CRAP requires?

How thorough are the bureaucrats going to be in verifying that the Crappers actually graduated high school, are under 30, and have resided here for five continuous years?  I see a lot of fake diplomas, fake leases, and fake foreign birth certificates on the horizon.  Not to mention, if the purpose of CRAP was to allocate scarce resources, couldn’t those resources be used to process deportation paperwork instead of going on wild goose chases to verify documentation?

(I also see a bunch of human smugglers south of the border convincing people that all they have to do to get a work permit is get to America, as well as a thriving forged documents market.  This is a very bad time of year to cross the Arizona desert, and many people will die because they get conned.  But hey, way to create jobs, Obama!  Smugglers, forgers, and morticians all thank you.)

The left is trying to diffuse attention to the CRAP that Obama put in the punch bowl by focusing on Neil The Shouting Reporter.  I don’t know if it will work or not, but I do know this:  After more than four years of the media lobbing softballs to Obama, it’s refreshing to see a member of the press play hardball.  He’s not a king, or an emperor, or a god.  He is a man, who works for the people, and lives in a house that belongs to the people.  As such, the people have a right to question him.  If he’s going to refuse to answer questions, preferring instead to sit for interviews where he can control the content, the setting, and how much eyeliner the makeup girl puts on him, then anyone who blurts out a question is all right by me.  Bad timing or not, it should be fine with anyone who believes in freedom.

The question Neil Munro asked, which was essentially “What about the unemployed?”, brings me to another comment.  Obama is toast.  People in Ohio and Arizona and everywhere in between who are unemployed are confused as to how offering back-door amnesty to almost a million illegal aliens is going to help THEM.  As I’ve said before, everyone knows someone who is unemployed.  Not only are Obama’s policies killing whole industries in places like West Virginia, but now a million new workers are going to flood an already struggling job market.  And you can bet Eric Holder will be letting the lawsuits fly fast and furious if anyone declines to hire the Crappers.

Mitt thanks you for the campaign assistance, Barry.

Immigration is a good thing.  But there is a process in place to do it legally, and to say you’re going to come here and stay here illegally is spitting in the face of America.  I understand that some of these people were brought here as children.  That does not mean they couldn’t have done something about their illegal status once they turned 18.  The talking point has always been, we don’t punish children for the crimes of their parents.  This is true.  We also don’t reward them for the crimes of their parents.  If mom and dad broke federal law by pulling off a million dollar bank heist, would we let the children keep the money because affluence is “the only life they’ve ever known”?  Of course not.

I saw a dude from India on TV.  He speaks 14 languages.  He is subject to deportation because the ICE Man sent some paperwork to a company he had worked for that went out of business.  He never got it, and that jeopardized his case.  If he wants special dispensation to stay, I’m all for it, because he brings something extraordinary to the party.  Ditto for anyone with a degree in a useful discipline such as science or engineering.

However, if your only claim on my country is that it’s, like, WAY better than the third-world pile of dung you came from, then go home, and immigrate the right way.  Obama can sign all the executive orders he wants.  You still don’t legally belong here, and if Obama believes it is acceptable to bypass Congress and offer amnesty by fiat, then he doesn’t belong in the presidency.