Politics

Amnesty Advocates React To Court Ruling With Anger, Frustration

Neil Munro White House Correspondent
Font Size:

Amnesty supporters reacted with self-righteous sneers, anger and frustration to the late Monday night decision by a federal judge to block Barack Obama’s unilateral amnesty.

“Judge [Andrew] Hanen’s decision is an example of judicial vigilantism… we are confident Judge Hanen’s regressive, polemical decision will be humiliated by history’s march toward progress,” said a statement from the National Day Laborer Organizing Network.

“The decision is not permanent… We are confident that the higher courts will reject this lawsuit since it has no legal merit and only wastes taxpayer dollars & attack immigrant youth, workers & families,” said another statement by a union-backed group of younger illegals, dubbed United We Dream.

The verdict may be reversed by higher courts, but for now, it marks a second major defeat for Obama’s multi-year effort to increase immigration. In 2014, Republican voters pressured GOP leaders to block the Obama-backed amnesty bill that was passed through the Senate in 2013, despite huge pressure from GOP donors, business groups, progressives, the establishment media and progressive foundations.

Amnesty advocates dismissed the many polls that show that Obama’s immigration push is unpopular, and ignore the huge impact on Americans of the government-created flood of foreign labor into the U.S. labor market.

“Undocumented immigrants show Americans what it is to be Americans — we fight for a country that excludes and ignores us,” said Jose Antonio Vargas, a Filipino gay advocate.

Frank Sharry, a progressive advocate for greater immigration, predicted the decision would cause GOP infighting over whether to keep a ban on amnesty funding in the pending 2015 budget for the Department of Homeland Security. “GOP abt 2 explode in civil war,” he said in a late-night tweet. GOP “Ldrshp will declare victory, try 2 fund DHS. Hell No right wants shutdown fight. Who wins? Bet on far right.”

Currently, the GOP-drafted DHS budget bill is being filibustered by all 46 Democratic senators. They oppose defunding the amnesty. The Democratic senators support Obama’s amnesty,  even though the extra foreign workers would increase job competition facing unemployed and young Americans.

In November 2014, one in every five U.S. jobs was held by a foreign-born worker, up from one-in-six jobs in January 2010, according to federal data highlighted by the Center for Immigration Studies.

Each year, four million young Americans begin competing for jobs against at least 10 million unemployed Americans, against two million annual new immigrants and against a resident pool of roughly two million guest workers.

“In sum: a GOP judge granted GOP officials’ motion to delay a program precipitated by the inaction of the GOP-controlled House,” said Ben Winograd, an private-sector immigration lawyer at the Immigrant & Refugee Appellate Center.

The decision “is nothing more than judicial activism by an extremist judge,” claimed Marshall Fitz, the vice president of immigration Policy at the Center for American Progress.

The ACLU complained the judge’s decision was  “extreme and inflammatory.”

The late-night, 123-page injunction, however, was cautiously written to survive review by appeals court judges.

The decision does not declare that Obama’s project is unconstitutional. Instead, the judge says that Obama’s effort to award work-permits, Social Security numbers, tax rebates and a quick path to citizenship to at least four million illegals violated the Administrative Procedure Act, which describes how government must draft, publish, debate and finalize regulations.

The judge may reach further when he later releases his full decision on Obama’s amnesty. That decision may argue that Obama’s unilateral amnesty is unconstitutional.

But for now, if Obama wants to lift the injunction that is stopping his amnesty, his lawyers must persuade the appeals court judges that he is not violating the federal regulatory procedure law.

The judge’s language, however, suggests he is confident that his argument will survive the appeals.

The Department of Homeland Security “does have discretion in the manner in which it chooses to fulfill the expressed will of Congress,” said the decision.

“It cannot, however, enact a program in which it not only ignores the dictates of Congress, but actively acts to thwart them… [Obama] is not just rewriting the laws he is creating them from scratch.”

Obama describes his policy as “deferred action,” implying that repatriations may restart later. But, according to the judge, “deferred action is not a status created or authorized by law or by Congress, nor has tis properties been described in any legislative act.”

“The award of legal status and all that it entails is an impermissible refusal to follow the law.”

The amnesty “does not represent mere inadequacy; it is complete abdication. … It is, in effect, a new law,” the judge wrote.

The administration “is not just rewriting the laws; he is creating them from scratch.”

The administration “cannot enact a program whereby it not only ignores the dictates of Congress, but actively acts to thwart them.”

Hanen’s decision was welcomed by House Speaker John Boehner.

“The president said 22 times he did not have the authority to take the very action on immigration he eventually did, so it is no surprise that at least one court has agreed,” Boehner said. “We will continue to follow the case as it moves through the legal process. Hopefully, Senate Democrats who claim to oppose this executive overreach will now let the Senate begin debate on a bill to fund the Homeland Security department.”

White House officials defended the president’s amnesty and vowed to appeal.

“The Supreme Court and Congress have made clear that the federal government can set priorities in enforcing our immigration laws—which is exactly what the President did when he announced commonsense policies to help fix our broken immigration system,” they said in a Tuesday statement.

“The Department of Justice, legal scholars, immigration experts, and the district court in Washington, D.C. have determined that the President’s actions are well within his legal authority. Top law enforcement officials, along with state and local leaders across the country, have emphasized that these policies will also benefit the economy and help keep communities safe,” the statement continued.

“The district court’s decision wrongly prevents these lawful, commonsense policies from taking effect and the Department of Justice has indicated that it will appeal that decision.”

Follow Neil on Twitter

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel