SITREP - February 21st, 2015

Well, despite the House being out of session this past week, there is a fair amount of news to report on the immigration front. As most of you have probably seen, a federal district court judge issued an injunction against the Department of Homeland Security regarding the President’s executive amnesty. 

On Monday night (2/16), the judge ordered the Department to stop moving forward with the President’s plan. The ruling came in response to a lawsuit filed by twenty-six states. 

As the Washington Post reported the next day:

“No law gave the administration the power ‘to give 4.3 million removable aliens what the Department of Homeland Security itself labels as ‘legal presence,’ the judge said in a memorandum opinion. ‘In fact the law mandates that these illegally-present individuals be removed.’ The Department of Homeland Security ‘has adopted a new rule that substantially changes both the status and employability of millions.’”

So far, the Administration is only partly discouraged. The President told reporters that DHS will continue with preparations for the implementation of his new policy but that they would not begin accepting applications until this legal challenge is resolved. It’s not clear yet how long that will take, but it could be quite a while.

At this point, only a few things are clear – an overwhelming majority of Americans don’t think the President should have done this on his own, more than half of the states in the Union have sued him over it, Congress is united in opposition to his policy, and now a federal court judge has ordered him to stop. If that’s not enough reason for the President to pull back, I don’t know what is. I don’t think he feels like he’s accountable to anybody but his base and that’s just not how the leader of an entire nation can behave. 

The only rebuttal his supporters offer is that there is a moral imperative to act in the face of opposition in Congress. They say it’s an emergency, that these people who have cut the line and come here illegally must be allowed to stay and to come out of the shadows. The moral imperative, not to mention the legal and constitutional imperative, is to reward the people who come here the right way. It’s to support the families who wait patiently year after year, who fill out the paperwork and wait their turn. Believe me when I tell you that the people elsewhere in the world who are so desperate for an opportunity to come to America are also struggling to provide for their families. And while I know as people of faith we want to care for all those who cannot care for themselves, the reality is that we must have an orderly system and that means putting the people first who do it the right way, not those who try to cheat the system.

Our nation is not just a group of three hundred million-plus people who magically manage to live beside one another in a thriving democracy. We live and work and succeed together because we all agree to honor the same legal system. We may not always agree with the laws, but we recognize that as citizens, if we are going to live harmoniously together, we have to agree to abide by them. And when somebody in our community decides to violate our system of laws, we recognize that as a society, that individual must face the consequences. When twelve million people decided to come and stay here illegally, they knowingly and willingly broke our laws. And each and every day that they continue living here, even if it’s to provide for their children, they continue to break the law with their very presence. We cannot, as a nation, accept that.  You either change the law or you live within it. There is no acceptable third option. 

So if the President wants to change the law and he feels it is a moral imperative that this country does so, then he should persuade the people, and through them their representatives, that it’s time for a change. He should explain to all of the legal immigrants who came to this country why their sacrifice should not be honored. He should tell all of the people waiting patiently around the world who want to come to this country responsibly why their sacrifice should not be honored. And he should tell all of the law enforcement officers of this land who we ask to enforce the laws and to defend our borders why their sacrifices should not be honored. 

What the President should not do, and what I’m certain the courts will tell the President he cannot do, is dishonor our nation by flagrantly trying to create his own legal and justice system separate from the laws of the United States. That is not how this country has made it all these years and it’s not how we’ll continue to make it in the future. It’s time he realized that. And as loudly as the American people and the United States Congress have spoken, it appears we will need the legal system to speak just as loudly with us.

In any case, that’s where things stand. The funding for the Department of Homeland Security runs out at the end of the week. The House has passed legislative fully funding the Department and blocking the President’s executive amnesty. Democrats in the Senate have blocked it from getting a vote. With time so short, I think it’s about time they acknowledged where the American people are on this and let the people at DHS continue their work uninterrupted. But that’s just my two cents. As always, I’m interested to hear from you all. If you have a minute, please drop me a line and let me know where you stand.

Thanks again.  

Sincerely,
Rich Nugent
Member of Congress