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House GOP’s empty gesture on immigration

House GOP’s empty gesture on immigration

Last week, five more Americans were killed thanks to yet another illegal alien released from a local prison.  As we’ve noted before, Obama’s suspension of the Secure Communities program has led to the breakdown of all cooperation between ICE and local law enforcement.  The problem is more systemic than sanctuary cities; we are suffering from sanctuary nation.

Unfortunately, ever since Obama has suspended deportations, Republicans have refused to confront him in a serious manner.  They have refused to use the power of the purse to end Obama’s amnesty and restore Secure Communities.  They have even declined to pass standalone enforcement legislation, such as the Davis-Oliver bill, which would have prevented the jailbreak of illegal aliens that led to the killing spree in Kansas City last week.   

On Thursday, the GOP-controlled House finally plans to act on immigration.  This “action,” however,  it will be nothing more than an empty gesture and will actually create a precedent to further legitimize the super power of the courts and delegitimize the power of Congress over the sovereignty of our nation.  The House will vote on a resolution to allow Speaker Paul Ryan to file an amicus brief in U.S. v. Texas, the case pending before the Supreme Court that will decide the constitutionality of Obama’s unconstitutional amnesty.

From Ryan’s vantage point, why use the legislative and budgetary leverage when you could just grovel before the courts and file an amicus brief!  By pleading with the Court to protect our sovereignty instead of using legislative warfare to block Obama’s amnesty, Congress is implicitly crowning the judiciary king over immigration policy.

This represents a very dangerous precedent and is a complete departure from our history as a representative republic.  As I will lay out in my new book, Stolen Sovereignty [which you can pre-order on Amazon], not only has the judiciary become the final arbiter of all constitutional issues, a complete departure from our founding values, but what was supposed to be the weakest branch of government is rapidly becoming the supreme authority over immigration.

For the first two hundred years of our nation’s history, the courts rightfully deferred to congressional statutes and recognized the legislature’s plenary power over the sovereignty of the nation.  As Justice Felix Frankfurter said, “there is not merely 'a page of history'. . . but a whole volume. . .  that the formulation of these policies [immigration] is entrusted exclusively to Congress has become about as firmly embedded in the legislative and judicial tissues of our body politic as any aspect of our government. . . ."[i]

This is rapidly changing as the courts have granted amnesty and mandated the release of thousands of violent criminal aliens in recent years.  For Congress to openly abdicate its responsibility to defend its statutes and defer to the court in an effort to stymie executive amnesty will have a long-term effect of empowering the courts to grant judicial amnesty.

Meanwhile, as the GOP Congress abdicates its responsibility and focuses on meaningless, banal, and politically correct bills that are impossible to harness and use as weapons against Obama’s transformative agenda, Obama’s approval has risen to its highest levels in three years.  These guys still don’t get it.

[i] Galvan v. Press 347 U.S. 531 (1954)


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