DHS Funding Battle Lost, War against Obama Amnesty Continues

By Joe Guzzardi
March 4, 2015

Despite weeks of adamantly insisting that he wouldn’t acquiesce to President Obama and Senate Democrats on executive amnesty, House Speaker John Boehner lamely threw in the towel and authorized a vote on the “clean” long-term Department of Homeland Security funding. Seventy-five House Republicans joined with 183 Democrats to pass the $40 billion budget.

Boehner said that ultimately, the budget with the attached anti-amnesty amendments which would defund Obama’s unilateral executive action was a debate the House couldn’t win, a radically different conclusion than he reached last November when he promised to fight the executive action “tooth and nail.” Instead, in a closed door meeting with his House colleagues, Boehner described the sorry outcome as “a full cave.”

Although Texas federal court Judge Andrew Hanen has temporarily enjoined Obama’s executive action, underestimating the president’s determination to subvert the Constitution on behalf of legalizing five million unlawful immigrants would a grave mistake.

Consider these three ominous signs. First, the DHS had already approved 100,000 amnesty applications for individuals who qualified under the recently liberalized guidelines for so called DREAMers. Obama originally granted DREAMers deferred action in 2012, valid for two years with a two year renewal. Under Obama’s November order, new DREAMer amnesties would have three-year terms. Judge Hanen’s decision only applied to Obama’s 2014 amnesty, and not to the 2012 version, the justification the administration used for pressing ahead.

Last week, the Justice Department issued an advisory to Judge Hanen stating that it saw no reason why the three-year 2014 DREAM amnesty couldn’t proceed since it isn’t covered by his ruling. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services refuses to answer direct questions about how it’s handling pending amnesty applications—are they on hold or being processed for approval?

Second, Congress’ most vocal amnesty supporter, Illinois U.S. Representative Luis Gutierrez, has urged Obama to consider a partial launch of his executive amnesty. Under those circumstances, the 24 states that didn’t participate in the lawsuit eventually brought before Judge Hanen would proceed as originally planned. If the White House takes Gutierrez’s advice, a strong possibility, it would show Obama’s blatant disregard for the federal government’s Judicial Branch and give his critics more evidence that the president’s preferred governance style is dictatorship, not democracy.

Third, in a nationally televised interview, Obama promised that there would be “consequences” for border patrol agents who disregard his order which mandates that lower risk aliens not be detained but instead be allowed to cross into the U.S. unimpeded. In other words, Obama is threatening unnamed “consequences” for agents who do their jobs, swore to uphold U.S. laws and protect the nation.

The House ignominiously lost the DHS funding battle. But the war against Obama’s amnesty, and other future overreaches, wages on. Americans overwhelmingly oppose amnesty, and especially object to the work permits, billions in tax credits, and the eventual trillions in entitlement payments that accompany it. With American sovereignty on the line, Senator Jeff Sessions called for “renewed determination” to beat back special interest groups and wayward ethnic identity politicians.

Toward that end, Texas U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith reintroduced his mandatory E-Verify bill which would insure that only citizens and legal immigrants hold U.S. jobs. About 20 million Americans are unemployed or underemployed yet seven million illegal immigrants, many in payroll jobs, participate in the U.S. labor force.

E-Verify would eliminate the jobs magnet that lures so many aliens, and would be the first step in the long road toward curtailing illegal immigration.

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Joe Guzzardi is a Californians for Population Stabilization Senior Writing Fellow. Contact him at [email protected]