Americans Must Reject Amnesty by Executive Fiat

Statement by NPG President, Don Mann

July 11, 2011

Americans learn in high school civics class that Congress makes the laws and the President sees to it that those laws are well and faithfully executed.  No exception can be made when it comes to immigration enforcement.

Faced by congressional resistance to expanding immigration and amnestying the nation’s 11 million illegal immigrants, for well over a year the Obama Administration has been devising administrative measures to safeguard immigration violators from deportation – all without reference to those pesky lawmakers in Congress.  Our elected representatives are being excluded from changes in enforcement policy that will have long term critical consequences for this country’s demographic future as well as its public finances, social cohesion and workplace welfare.

The latest and most sweeping expansion of the Executive branch’s policy of free passes for illegal aliens appears in a June 17 internal memorandum by John Morton, Director of the Office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on “Exercising Prosecutorial Discretion.”

That document mandates far more liberal use of the “prosecutorial discretion” of immigration enforcers to defer or cancel individual deportations.  The justification given is that scarce enforcement resources require setting deportation “priorities,” with first priority (and seemingly the only one) to the removal of criminals and national security risks.  An early result of this policy has been the withdrawal by Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS) of thousands of deportation cases already before the immigration court.

Morton’s memo defines eighteen examples of illegal presence where “discretion” might be warranted (noting that even this generous list is “not exhaustive.”)  Some cases meriting consideration are illegal aliens who:  are young or elderly; came as a child; are high school grads or college students; have close community or family ties; have a clean rap sheet; are immediate relatives of a service man or veteran; or

are a person or spouse of a person who is pregnant or nursing or suffering from a physical or mental illness.  Also cited for use of discretion are cases where the violator is likely to gain legal status through family reunification, a claim for asylum, or status as a victim of human trafficking or domestic violence.  Clearly the administration hopes to give younger illegals the protection from deportation denied them by Congress’s rejection of the DREAM Act earlier this year. 

Those hoping to slow and eventually halt U.S. population growth have every reason to expect that this smorgasbord of ameliorating circumstances will give hard-pressed immigration agents ready justification for shelving hundreds of thousands of deportation cases.  Americans favoring population sanity must also be concerned about the green light these policies give to millions of prospective illegal entrants now waiting and watching abroad or to those now here illegally who might otherwise be induced by enforcement risks to go home.  

The ICE memo itself correctly identifies preservation of “the integrity of the immigration system” as a major rationale for enforcement – the very integrity it is now eroding by administrative nonfeasance.  Immigration enforcement without deportation is toothless.  Congress imposes limits on immigration for sound demographic, fiscal and economic national interests, and backs them up with deterrents such as deportation for those that disregard those limits.  Six leading U.S. Senators have questioned the President whether these policies are intended to circumvent the legislative power of Congress.  And a bill limiting the President’s authority to stay deportations is now in preparation in the House.  Americans should demand that Congress resist all attempts of the White House to end or weaken by fiat the vital deterrents to unlawful entry built into our laws.    

 

This statement has been forwarded to President Barack Obama, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, Director of Citizenship and Immigration Services Alejandro Mayorkas, and Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement John Morton.   

Our letter to President Obama

NPG has also issued a Press Release stating its opposition to this matter, which has appeared in nearly 300 publications including: 

ABC News
Bloomberg News
Business Insider
Congressional Quarterly
Dow Jones
International Business Times
The Hill
Los Angeles Daily News
US News & World Report
U.S. Politics Today
Washington Business Journal
Washington Examiner
Yahoo News