Senate Caves on Lynch; Rewards Obama, Endorses his Unconstitutional Amnesty

By Joe Guzzardi
April 24, 2015

Now that the Senate has confirmed Loretta Lynch as the new Attorney General, the November 2014 Republican rout may as well never have happened. During the weeks that led up to last year’s mid-term election, Republicans campaigned vigorously against President Obama’s failure to enforce immigration law. As a result, the GOP captured strong majorities in both congressional chambers.

Obama immediately and angrily slapped down voters when he issued an executive order that would effectively grant amnesty to about five million illegal immigrants, and reward them with social security numbers, work permits and welfare benefits.

The president’s relentless dismantling of immigration law began shortly after his inauguration when he ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement to end workplace raids. As Obama continuously rewrote immigration law during his six years in office, Attorney General Eric Holder was his enabler, and consistently the target of Republicans’ ire. When Holder announced his retirement last year, the Republican-controlled Congress had a chance to install a new Attorney General that respected the law, and would carry out the voters’ mandate.

Once Obama nominated Holder replica Loretta Lynch, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, rejecting her would have been a simple matter of math. Instead with ten Republicans voting in her favor including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Lynch was, incomprehensibly, confirmed 56-43.

McConnell wasn’t obligated to advance Lynch or any other candidate to the floor for a vote; her nomination proceeded at his pleasure. Lynch’s mind-boggling confirmation as the nation’s chief law enforcement officer comes despite her Senate testimony which made it crystal clear that she supports Obama’s amnesty and his 2012 deferred action for childhood arrivals. Under direct questioning, Lynch either avoided answering whether Obama’s executive action would be carried out on a “case-by-case” basis as the law requires or if a future president could, applying Obama’s prosecutorial discretion duplicitous rationale, rewrite tax, labor or environmental laws.

Lynch unequivocally endorsed Obama’s amnesty saying that the president’s action is “legal and constitutional,” and that “the right and the obligation to work is one that’s shared by everyone in this country regardless of how they came here.” In Lynch’s eyes, the 11 million unlawful aliens living in the U.S. are as equally entitled to work as American citizens, a legally indefensible concept that should have barred her from further consideration.

Collectively, the ten Republicans who defected are, when it comes to respecting immigration laws, a sorry group. Lindsay Graham (South Carolina) and Jeff Flake (Arizona) were members in the Senate Gang of Eight that passed a potentially disastrous immigration bill in 2013. Early this year, Orrin Hatch introduced a high tech bill that could triple the total of H-1B visas granted to overseas workers.  Four others are up for re-election in 2016: Ohio’s Rob Portman, Wisconsin’s Ron Johnson, Illinois Mark Kirk, and New Hampshire’s Kelly Ayotte. All may have feared a no vote against Lynch would have led to opponents’ charges of racism or sexism.

Lynch’s advocacy for aliens’ working rights will be hurtful for unemployed and under-employed African-Americans, a reality neither the new Attorney General nor the Republicans who voted for her seem to care about. The black U-6 unemployment rate is about 20 percent.

In the Lynch affair, all sides are complicit in undermining America’s future: squishy, politically craven Republicans and agenda-driven Democrats. The vote on Lynch was the most significant immigration-related issue since Obama announced his amnesty. Too bad the GOP blew its chance to make a powerful statement against Obama and his amnesty that would have resonated with an America that wants less immigration and more enforcement.

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