Politics

‘Illegal’: Priebus Slams Obama’s Post-Election Amnesty Plan

Neil Munro White House Correspondent
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Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus Wednesday toughened his criticism of President Barack’s planned amnesty of illegals, saying the move would be illegal.

“We ought to be unified against his illegal action, and I think we ought to be unified against a senator — in Mary Landrieu — that supports this president and what he is doing here illegally,” Priebus told reporters during a Wednesday press conference about Landrieu’s use of government money to pay for her flight to fundraisers.

Last week, Landrieu’s aides admitted she had used $33,700 in Senate funds to pay for 43 flights to 136 campaign events since 2002.

In June, Obama said he would provide an unilateral amnesty to millions of illegals. But early this month, officials said he would delay the amnesty until after the election to protect Democratic candidates from public hostility. For example, a poll sponsored by Investors’ Business Daily showed that the unilateral amnesty is unpopular among voters, and even among Obama’s base groups.

Obama’s delay provoked an outcry among disappointed Latino lobbies. But this week, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus decided to accept an additional delay until after the expected Louisiana runoff election, slated for Dec. 6.

The runoff will be held if no candidate gets more than 50 percent of the November vote. That’s likely, because two GOP candidates are splitting the vote against Landrieu, whose polling support is roughly 45 percent.

By delaying the amnesty, “the president is playing politics, we all know that,” said Priebus.

The president “will say and do anything to get an edge” in the pending election, which may give the GOP a small majority in the Senate, and block Obama’s agenda for the remainder of his tenure.

Obama “doesn’t possess any constitutional power whatsoever to rewrite the laws. He obviously either doesn’t understand or respect the Constitution because what he is proposing is illegal,” Priebus told The Daily Caller.

Voters should cast their ballots against Democratic senators — including Landrieu — who support Obama’s willingness to ignore immigration laws, Preibus suggested.

Landrieu “supports him in this effort in an overreach on immigration,” he said.

“Mary Landrieu generally supports this president 95 percent of the time, and she doesn’t fit in with the electorate which opposes Obama’s illegal action, not just around the country but specifically in Louisiana,” he said.

However, Preibus focused his criticism on Obama’s decision to act unilaterally, without the approval of Congress.

Priebus did not condemn the planned amnesty for its impact on American workers, whose 2014 wages have fallen back to where they were a decade ago.

The impact of an amnesty could be large. If Obama awards work permits to four million illegals during the next year, he’ll give employers the ability to hire low-wage foreign workers in place of the four million Americans who enter the workforce in the same year.

Last June, Landrieu voted for the Senate’s immigration expansion bill, which would have roughly doubled the award of work permits to foreign workers each year. That extra inflow of foreign workers would have cut Americans’ wages, increased unemployment and widened the wealth gap between wage-earners and investors for 20 years, according to a June 2013 report by the Congressional Budget Office.

Currently, the government accepts one million immigrants and roughly 700,000 guest workers each year.

In contrast to Priebus, other GOP leaders, led by Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, want the GOP to seek support from voters by trimming the inflow of foreign workers so that employers hire more Americans at higher wages. However, that policy is strongly opposed by the GOP business wing, because it would cut corporate profits and stock values.

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