REPUBLICANS SEEK TO BLOCK NEW IMMIGRATION POLICY
Posted: Saturday, June 23rd, 2012 at 10:55 am
By: Tea Party
Just days after President Obama issued an executive order unilaterally changing the way the Department of Homeland Security deals with certain classes of illegal immigrants, Republicans in Congress introduced legislation to block his plans.
Obama’s new policy allows up to 800,000 illegal immigrants under age 30 to apply for work authorization if their parents brought them to the U.S. before they were 16 and they’ve lived here at least five years, are a student, have a high school diploma or GED, or have served in the military.
Reps. David Schweikert and Ben Quayle, both Arizona Republicans, filed separate bills Monday, calling Obama’s executive order a “thinly veiled political ploy” and “back-door amnesty” that is “stunning in both its arrogance and shortsightedness.”
“What the president’s done is both great violence to the Constitution and separation of powers, but is also pretty darn cynical,” Schweikert told CitizenLink. “The president doesn’t have the constitutional authority to instruct his agencies to follow some laws and not follow others.”
Quayle, who named his legislation the “Preventing Back-Door Amnesty Act of 2012,” agreed.
“This end-run around Congress was a direct rebuke to the principle of three co-equal branches of government … and more broadly, our entire system of laws,” he said in a statement. “It’s time for Congress to send a loud and clear message to the Obama administration that its efforts to circumvent the legislative branch and ignore our nation’s laws will not stand.”
The issue has touched off a firestorm of controversy, even among evangelicals.
Just days before the president announced his executive order, the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) released a statement signed by more than 100 faith leaders — including Focus on the Family President Jim Daly — calling for legislatively enacted immigration reforms that help keep families together.
However, the president’s plan exposed major differences between the groups. While NAE President Leith Anderson called it “the right thing to do,” Tom Minnery, Focus’ senior vice president for government and public policy, blasted the executive order for allowing young immigrants to stay in the country while their parents are deported.
“We are not supporting this announcement,” he said. “The first two years Obama had Democratic control of Congress. He promised to fix immigration in his first year and he hasn’t done so. It is hard to take the president seriously after that.”
This content is published under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Please honor attribution.
Tags: CitizenLink, Illegal Immigration, Karla Dial, Preventing Back-Door Amnesty Act of 2012
I don’t know if I was made more furious by Obama’s amnesty plan or Mitt Rommney’s pandering plan to staple a green card to a college degree received by an illegal alien. Unfortunately, we’ll have to, once again, hold our noses and vote for the Republican as the lesser of two evils. While there are large differences that really make a difference between the two candidates, does anybody really believe that Rommney will be a foe of amnesty? I sure don’t. And I don’t trust Marco Rubio on this issue either. What we need is someone like Allen West at the top of the ticket.
Any vote for a 3rd party “spoiler” candidate is a vote for more of what we’ve had for the last 3+ years. I’m sure the Obama camp is giddy and salivating that they will get a boost from your protest vote. Yeah, who cares if Obama has another whack at the Supreme Court? We’re expecting their decision this week on Obamacare…will it be 5-4 against or 5-4 to uphold? All the socialists need is one more jurist on the Supremes and we’re done for.
willard has failed to tell us what he’ll do, but he has a plan that i doubt we’re going to like any better than we like obama’s. nobody likes either of them. i’ll vote gary johnson if paul isn’t on the ballot. johnson’s too soft on immigration for my taste, but at least he’s said what he wants to do. i won’t vote for the lesser of 2 evils again. why, in a country as great as ours, do we get such crappy choices when it comes to choosing a potus? the 2-party system is broken with no way to fix it in sight.