{"id":8052,"date":"2014-12-01T09:08:39","date_gmt":"2014-12-01T17:08:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=8052"},"modified":"2014-12-01T09:08:39","modified_gmt":"2014-12-01T17:08:39","slug":"for-obama-inconvenient-law-is-irrelevant-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/for-obama-inconvenient-law-is-irrelevant-law\/","title":{"rendered":"For Obama, Inconvenient Law Is Irrelevant Law"},"content":{"rendered":"

The president dismantles immigration law that he finds incompatible with his own larger agenda.<\/em><\/h3>\n
\n
\"(John
(John Gress\/Getty)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

T<\/span>here is a humane, transparent, truthful \u2014 and constitutional \u2014 way to address illegal immigration. Unfortunately, President Obama\u2019s unilateral plan to exempt millions of residents from federal immigration law is none of those things.<\/p>\n

Obama said he had to move now because of a dawdling Congress. He forgot to mention that there were Democratic majorities in Congress in 2009 and 2010, yet he did nothing, in fear of punishment at the polls.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Nor did Obama push amnesty in 2011 or 2012, afraid of hurting his own re-election chances.<\/p>\n

Worries over sabotaging Democratic chances in the 2014 midterms explain his inaction from 2012 until now. He certainly wouldn\u2019t have waited until 2015 to act, because Republicans will then control Congress.<\/p>\n

Given that he has no more elections and can claim no lasting achievements, Obama now sees amnesty as his last desperate chance at establishing some sort of legacy.<\/p>\n

Obama cited empathy for undocumented immigrants. But he expressed no such worry about the hundreds of thousands of applicants who wait for years in line rather than simply illegally cross the border.<\/p>\n

Any would-be immigrant would have been far wiser to have broken rather than abided by federal laws. Citizens who knowingly offer false information on federal affidavits or provide false Social Security numbers would not receive the sort of amnesties likely to be given to undocumented immigrants.<\/p>\n

Obama has downplayed Americans\u2019 worries about social costs and competition for jobs, but studies show illegal immigration has depressed the wages of entry-level American workers while making social services costly for states and burdensome for U.S. citizens.<\/p>\n

Obama says he has the legal authority to rewrite immigration law without working with Congress. Yet on more than twenty occasions when it was politically inexpedient to grant amnesties, Obama insisted that he would not \u2014 or that such a move was prohibited by the Constitution.<\/p>\n

Obama not long ago warned us about the dangers of granting amnesties by fiat. \u201cThe problem is that I\u2019m the president of the United States, I\u2019m not the emperor of the United States,\u201d he said. On another occasion, he lamented, \u201cBelieve me, the idea of doing things on my own is very tempting.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0But that\u2019s not how our system works. That\u2019s not how our democracy functions. That\u2019s not how our Constitution is written.\u201d<\/p>\n

By setting aside settled immigration policy and ignoring statutes he finds inconvenient, Obama has set a new precedent that a president can arbitrarily declare what is valid and what is not valid immigration law. Should his successors make up their own versions of any federal statutes they choose, in areas ranging from abortion and gun control to drug enforcement and environmental protection?<\/p>\n

Obama claims he has the legal authority to grant amnesty because Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush did it. But again, Obama predictably misleads. Both of those presidents worked with Congress to ensure that new immigration legislation would not split apart families. The amnesties they granted were in accordance with the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 and had only a fraction of the impact that Obama\u2019s executive order would have.<\/p>\n

More importantly, even those congressionally sanctioned and narrow amnesties were largely seen as failures. Past non-enforcement of immigration law helped lead to the explosion in illegal immigration of recent years.<\/p>\n

Obama says Congress is stalling. But his characterization of congressional inaction simply means that the Congress does not wish to pass Obama\u2019s version of immigration reform. In 2015, if the Republican Congress submits an immigration bill to Obama, he will likely veto it. Would he then term his own opposition \u201cobstructionism\u201d?<\/p>\n

Obama has claimed that under his administration, deportations have increased. That, too, is untrue.<\/p>\n

The fraudulent statistics used to make this claim redefine how deportation is measured \u2014 in much the same manner that other federal statistics like unemployment rates and GDP growth were recalibrated for partisan purposes. Under Obama, Mexican citizens who are apprehended after crossing the border and returned to Mexico are classified as having been deported.<\/p>\n

Obama carefully omitted key details about qualifications for amnesty. He cited a criminal background check, but does that mean immigrants convicted of crimes such as driving under the influence or other serious misdemeanors will be deported? What about filing false federal affidavits or Social Security numbers \u2014 crimes that are usually felonies?<\/p>\n

The president suggested that all undocumented immigrants are here to work. Most are. But recent statistics still suggest that almost 40 percent of undocumented immigrants rely on some sort of state or federal welfare assistance.<\/p>\n

Obama will immediately reward millions of undocumented immigrants with exemption from immigration law. But does that mean those who do not qualify \u2014 those who committed felonies or serious misdemeanors, who have no sustained record of work, or who have been in the United States for only a year or two \u2014 will now face deportation that is as rapidly applied as amnesty?<\/p>\n

Because Obama has serially misled the American people on key issues such as Obamacare, the Benghazi attacks, and his own prior constitutional inability to grant amnesty, there is no reason to believe him on the details of his new immigration move. Assume instead that Obama sees his executive order simply as a first step in a continual unilateral effort to dismantle immigration law that he finds incompatible with his own larger agenda.<\/p>\n

For Obama, federal law is inconvenient \u2014 and therefore irrelevant.<\/p>\n

\u00a9 2014 Tribune Media Services, Inc.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The president dismantles immigration law that he finds incompatible with his own larger agenda. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online There is a humane, transparent, truthful \u2014 and constitutional \u2014 way to address illegal immigration. Unfortunately, President Obama\u2019s unilateral plan to exempt millions of residents from federal immigration law is none of those […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[11,46,362,271,135],"tags":[1031,861],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-25S","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6100,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/immigration-if-the-bill-passes\/","url_meta":{"origin":8052,"position":0},"title":"Immigration: If the Bill Passes","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 23, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Both Obama's record and the results of past immigration \"reforms\" paint a bleak picture. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online There are lots of reasons to believe that most of what is promised in the current so-called comprehensive immigration-reform bill won\u2019t be honored if it is passed by the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Immigration"","block_context":{"text":"Immigration","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/immigration\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8118,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obama-a-one-man-revolution\/","url_meta":{"origin":8052,"position":1},"title":"Obama, a One-Man Revolution","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 7, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"In his \u201cfourth quarter,\u201d he feels free to ignore popular opinion, the rule of law, and Congress. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online Until now there were two types of peaceful American change. One was a president, like Franklin D. Roosevelt or Ronald Reagan, working with Congress to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics"","block_context":{"text":"Politics","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"pic_giant_122514_SM_Barack-Obama-G","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/pic_giant_122514_SM_Barack-Obama-G-500x292.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":8248,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/our-illiberal-immigration-policy-leads-to-chaos\/","url_meta":{"origin":8052,"position":2},"title":"Our Illiberal Immigration Policy Leads to Chaos","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 26, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"We need a meritocratic, ethnically blind system \u2014 the opposite of the status quo. by Victor Davis Hanson\u00a0\/\/ National Review Online A federal judge has temporarily blocked President Obama\u2019s executive order that overrode existing immigration law. The result is more acrimony and chaos. It is a good time to remember\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Immigration"","block_context":{"text":"Immigration","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/immigration\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/download-24.jpeg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":10590,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-little-daca-honesty\/","url_meta":{"origin":8052,"position":3},"title":"A Little DACA Honesty","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 18, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"The Corner- The one and only.\u00a0 \/\/ National Review By Victor Davis Hanson It is surreal to look at more than a dozen clips of Barack Obama in non-campaign mode prior to 2012 assuring the country (\u201cI am not king\u201d) that he simply could not usurp the power of the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Immigration"","block_context":{"text":"Immigration","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/immigration\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8723,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/are-sanctuary-cities-the-new-confederates\/","url_meta":{"origin":8052,"position":4},"title":"Are Sanctuary Cities the New Confederates?","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 15, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson\u00a0\/\/ National Review Online There are now 340 sanctuary cities in the United States \u2014 and the list is growing. All of them choose to ignore federal immigration law by refusing to report detained undocumented immigrants to federal authorities under most circumstances. Partly as a result, deportations\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "California"","block_context":{"text":"California","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/california\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Photo via media@limitgov.org","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Kate-law-needed-to-end-sanctuary-cities-500x388.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":655,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/supreme-court-hypocrisies\/","url_meta":{"origin":8052,"position":5},"title":"Supreme Court Hypocrisies","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 10, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Until last week, Chief Justice John Roberts was vilified as the leader of a conservative judicial cabal poised to destroy the Obama presidency by overturning the federal takeover of healthcare. But with his unexpected affirmation, Roberts suddenly was lauded as the new Earl\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Punditry"","block_context":{"text":"Punditry","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/punditry\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8052"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8052"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8052\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8054,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8052\/revisions\/8054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}