Immigration and Dictatorship

The totalitarian nature of the American left and the Democratic party grow clearer by the day. That clarity is the only upside of the current one-party rule in the White House and both houses of Congress.

We've seen the will of the people overridden by courts time and time again on the issue of same-sex "marriage"--courts forcing a counterfeit version of marriage down the community's throats-- and in Massachusetts and Washington DC refusing to even allow the people to vote on the issue.

Now we're getting the same thing on illegal immigration, with an added twist. As everybody knows, Judge Susan Bolton put Arizona's SB 1070 on hold. Legal scholars have eviscerated her ruling, which is so bad that people like Heather MacDonald and Andy McCarthy are disagreeing over which part to attack first. McCarthy says:

"We are a body politic not a body legal. Federal law is (and is supposed to be) very limited in what it can prevent a sovereign state from doing. Beyond those narrow limitations, the state has discretion to govern itself as its citizens see fit. Similarly, the federal executive branch is vested with vast powers but finite resources, and it has discretion over how it will husband the latter. When a state’s lawful discretionary action conflicts with the president’s lawful discretionary decision not to enforce a congressional statute, that is not a legal issue. It is a political issue.

In such a situation, the job of the federal courts is to stay out of it. Then, in the court of public opinion, Arizona gets to demonstrate why illegal immigration is a huge problem, and the Obama administration can try to defend the de facto amnesty it seeks to confer on the illegal immigrant population. Indeed, it is only when the law throws back its veil and politics is allowed to operate, that we actually get to see that de facto amnesty is the president’s objective. That’s why the administration and its Justice Department want you to think of this as a legal case — if it’s politics, they lose . . . big."

The added twist is the newly discovered memo from Immigration services. Robert VerBruggen, writing in National Review:

"According to an internal U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services memo going the rounds of Capitol Hill and obtained by National Review, the agency is considering ways in which it could enact “meaningful immigration reform absent legislative action” — that is, without the consent of the American people through a vote in Congress.

“This memorandum offers administrative relief options to . . . reduce the threat of removal for certain individuals present in the United States without authorization,” it reads."

So now you don't even need a judge. Just make law via a group of bureaucrats. Rosemary Jenks, also in National Review, writes:

"The four authors of the memo, titled 'Administrative Alternatives to Comprehensive Immigration Reform,' are political appointees USCIS chief of policy and strategy Denise Vanison (a former immigration attorney and partner at Patton Boggs) and USCIS chief counsel Roxana Bacon (former general counsel for the American Immigration Lawyers Association), and two career employees of USCIS director Alejandro Mayorkas, another Obama appointee.

The U.S. Constitution gives Congress — and only Congress — the authority to decide federal immigration law, but the Obama administration has come up with an extensive list of ways to ensure that a majority of the illegal aliens in the United States are allowed to remain here."

She then lists a number of the most offensive of the memo's recommendations (follow the link) and which can be summed up "make(ing) sure no illegal alien is left behind."

Gibbons J. Cooney