Should Obama’s immigration executive action be delayed?

Michael Olson February 17, 2015, 6:54 AM Feb 17, 2015

Fed'l judge orders halt to Obama immigration policy.See where most of the affected people live http://t.co/zd0Sjw0ub3 pic.twitter.com/Yjex9vPVVm

— Pew Research Center (@pewresearch) February 17, 2015

“A federal judge in South Texas on Monday temporarily blocked President Barack Obama’s executive action on immigration, giving a coalition of 26 states time to pursue a lawsuit that aims to permanently stop the orders,” reports the Associated Press.

U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen’s decision comes after a hearing in Brownsville, Texas, in January and puts on hold Obama’s orders that could spare as many as five million people who are in the U.S. illegally from deportation.

Hanen wrote in a memorandum accompanying his order that the lawsuit should go forward and that without a preliminary injunction the states will “suffer irreparable harm in this case.”

Today’s Question: Should Obama’s immigration executive action be delayed?

About the blogger

Michael Olson

molson@mpr.org • @publicmic

Editor, MPR News

Gordon near Two Harbors

Yes. Presidential power, regardless of political party, can only go so far. Obama should have waited for the new congress to act, so the pressure would be on them.

I think some sort of immigration reform COULD happen, if it were comprehensive and included significant reductions of ALL forms of immigration to protect the American Dream (and our great landscapes) for future generations.

davehoug

An injunction is often granted on the basis of what causes the least disruption. Letting A take place and then trying to undo A is worse than waiting for A to pass muster.

KTN

Why, so our do less than nothing Congress can dither away another session, while real people continue to be effected by that inaction. The anti-immigration crowd will thump their chests, and circle themselves, but they are on the wrong side of history here; the President should continue to pressure those legislators until they actually accomplish meaningful changes.

No. The federal government, not states, has jurisdiction over immigration within the law. This suit is another political stunt by the GOP which continues to block efforts for substantive immigration reform.

John Dilligaf

You’re correct, to a point. The federal government does have jurisdiction over immigration in the form it was designed to operate, not under the pretense of the leader of the executive branch enacting his own version of legislation.

It is the job of the executive branch to execute – that is to enforce the laws as enacted by the legislative branch. What’s being attempted here is not “prosecutorial discretion.” The administration is printing work authorizations. It is affirmatively acting in contravention of federal law.

Gary F

Yes, because we should be giving them 2nd Amendment rights too.

I still don’t get it

Again what?

Rich in Duluth

No. The President has discretion as to how to implement immigration laws, the Congress, under do-nothing Republican control is doing just that…nothing. It is only right to allow long time residents who came to this country as children to remain and live their lives in peace, and it’s right to allow families to stay together… Where are Republican family “values” on this issue?

It’s long past time for Congress to debate and pass immigration legislation.

Gary F

So the next President can construct a wall at the border without Congress’ approval?

I don’t get it

WHAT?

Jim G

No. But this ruling is not unexpected. The Republicans in both houses of Congress are paralyzed by their inability to find a compromise within their own caucuses on this one of many important national issues. Actually, Obama is attempting to move needed immigration reform forward while Republicans have their hands tied by their extremist factions and again prove they are unable to govern our country responsibly.

Nicole

Until Congress can do anything other than bicker and point fingers, let the man get something accomplished!

David P.

Considering that the suit was brought by 26 states, all with GOP governors, and that the judge was appointed by President Bush and thoroughly vetted before chosen to bring the suit to, the ruling is not at all surprising.
Considering that President Obama has a record of being tougher on undocumented civilians than President Bush, this is nothing more than red meat partisan politics.

whitedoggie44

Though I agree with others, immigration reform is necessary, I do love the checks and balances of our form of government to insure we remove any opportunity for an imperial presidency.

Marsha P.

Should Obama’s immigration executive action be delayed? Why are we pondering the word “delayed” unless that is the bias of the question here? Shouldn’t it be read as ” stopped” ? Why is he more concerned with illegals than taking action to stop the Christian beheadings?

David P.

The President, the country and the world are confronted with crisis after crisis. At home and abroad.
While I don’t agree with your insinuation that the President is doing nothing to address ISIL atrocities (against Christians and others), I do agree that ISIL represents a greater danger than Dreamers not being aggressively deported.
I have a few questions for you:
Do you think the President is more concerned about Dreamers than ISIL’s victims? Why?
Which global or domestic crisis is the most important to address?
What would you have President Obama do regarding ISIL, with or without congressional approval?

Dave Francis

The Tea Party and
true Conservatives has welcomed Judge Hanen’s decision because it slows and
perhaps may even stop Obama’s unconstitutional executive illegal alien amnesty.
But the judge’s decision, brought about by principled conservative Attorney’s
General and Governors, is a desperate substitute that we welcome only because
GOP establishment in Congress have failed to do the job the Framers of the
Constitution predicted for them. Any block to Obama’s illegal alien Amnesty,
gives all Americans a chance to speak up and stand with the Tea Party against
this unconstitutional law. Just like Sen. Harry Reid’s deliberate refusal to
allow any vote on just about any bill that received house approval, any
legislation on the illegal alien amnesty has been held in stasis.

While millions of our own people, citizens and
legalized resident are seeking a decent job, fighting to survive and trying to
feed their family this president illegally overshot his authority and opened
the border wide, given access to criminals. Illegal aliens are criminals.
People who overstay their visa and intentionally do not return home after it
expires—they are criminals. Obama has split this great nation, with his radical
Liberal elected official liars and corruption that has never seen the light of
day before. His liberal Democratic backers are bleeding American dry of
benefits and entitlements, grants meant for the people who have paid into the
system. Not for illegal aliens fraudulently stealing child tax credits in the
billions of dollars, or Obama’s IRS letting illegal aliens appropriate billions
of more dollars in Earned Tax Credits through the theft of jobs.

The America we live in today is not the America I once knew? Everywhere I look I
see the corrosion of American principles, the loss of individual freedom, the
irrational fervor of the medical establishment and the tyranny of American
government that is even spying on us. Our freedoms have been slowly eroding
away, as this administration no longer listens to the people and gains its
acceptance by massive amounts of freebies to foreigners and to the deadbeats,
who are a virus on the taxpayers.

This is not the America I knew where surveillance efforts were
focused on foreign enemies rather than domestic citizens, where a citizen is
not threatened or intimidated by the ‘Politically Correct Police’ and free
speech is becoming a thing of the past, where veterans were honored and prominent
rather than condemned and medically neglected, that won World War II and beat
back a tyrannical Nazi fascist government in the name of freedom and democracy.
Today, the occupied American government has become the very same tyrannical
fascist bully it once sought to defeat, where health insurance was
affordable–and voluntary, where doctors could practice personalized, local
medicine and weren’t beholden to a stifling government system of mindless
diagnosis and medication prescribing.

An America where television or radio news actually resembled
the facts and wasn’t just a White House propaganda racket disguised as news,
where launching a conservative non-profit to educate people about the Bible or
the Bill of Rights did not get you cruelly targeted by the IRS with penalizing
audits, America where newly sworn-in government representatives didn’t violate
the Constitution the very next day after swearing allegiance to it, where
members of Congress actually read legislation before passing it, where federal
regulators used to limit the power of globalist corporations rather than conniving
with them to develop their power over the People, where special interests have
more influence over lawmakers than the people, where the US Attorney General
wasn’t a gun-running criminal thug who tried to cause gun aggression in America
in order to destroy the Second Amendment,

Today we have an America where a
masquerading ultra left Liberal President didn’t believe he was a dictator and
didn’t use the overreach of his executive orders to dictate his illegal
policies to the country bypassing Congress and implementing an illegal alien
amnesty.

Where is the America where being thought of as a patriot
was a insignia of honor, not an accusation of being a domestic terrorist, where
people used to trade hard work for honest pay instead of merely voting for
whatever politician promises them the most entitlement handouts, where your
vote actually counted, and where elections weren’t systematically rigged by
electronic voting machines or where non-citizens are able to vote, as there is
no need to show voter ID, where real truth-telling journalism was celebrated
rather than condemned and awash with Marxist ideology, Most of all, I miss the
America where good, honest, hard-working, truth-telling citizens didn’t have to
live in constant fear of being accused, arrested, imprisoned, fined or
terrorized by their own government.

It is time for GOP hierarchy—not the
Tea Party Republicans who fight against their own elitists puppets of mega
corporations, big business and agriculture; to put an end to the destruction of
American families that Obama’s cheap labor policy national impact or Obama’s
call for voters, legal and unlawful. Get ready
for battle. We need to march all over Washington. Plaster our messages
all over the offices of our elected officials. Get in their faces. We urge you to call your Representative and Senators
(the Capitol Switchboard is 1-866-220-0044) and demand that they vote to defund
Obama’s unconstitutional executive amnesty and protect American jobs for
American workers. Do not suppress the pressure in fact increase it on Washington as it
your nation, your employment and the shrinkage of your pay check.

So are you ready to help us stop this insanity
that is costing taxpayers 538 billion dollars a year and end amnesty for
illegal aliens once and for all—before the true and final destruction begins?
You the American people, have ALL the power of your vote. If the Southern
border stays open, with this President directives to overrun this country with
foreign nationals the citizens will suffer dearly, including massive tax
increases to financially support the 5 million already here and those waiting
to escape their country of birth.

Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama issues 50-page calendar of Obama’s overreaching
executive actions on immigration. Read Senator Sessions’ entire dated list here: at http://www.theblaze.com/blog/2015/02/16/

Yanotha Twangai

Do you think anyone actually read more than the first few lines of that hate-filled screed? Don’t kid yourself. You’re not persuading anyone, and filling the screen with more words doesn’t make your argument any less spurious. BTW, if Obama is such an extreme liberal, as you assert, why is the left so disappointed with him for not being liberal enough?
SpeedyGonzalesMOVEFORWARDUSA

BLAH…BLAH…BLAH..Let them cross the boarder. Until a Human Being really knows what it is truly like to live in a third world country No Human Being born in the United States can judge.
- whitedoggie44
  
  Does that mean we provide transportation to all 1 billion people living in poverty into the USA? I am not anti immigrant but do believe we need to set limits.
- Gordon near Two Harbors
  
  The US can’t be the release valve for the over-population problems in developing countries. If you are starving, or barely making it, who in their right mind would create more mouths to feed?
Marsha P.

If Bush had done this executive action to bypass Congress and our laws, he would have been impeached? Don’t blame President Obama, he’s doing the best he can with his misguided priorities and Progressive ideology. As long as the American Communist Party continues to support him ( check their campaign donation list) he will focus on illegals vs. doing his job to defend our country. The real question is, since DHS and our FBI admitted last week that we can’t monitor and track all of the criminal illegals, how many more hundreds of Christians and Jews and moderate Muslims will have to be beheaded before our President starts to act like a real leader? Paris has learned the hard way, their cost for being politically correct and stupid.
- Yanotha Twangai
  
  Ever since Clinton was impeached for a mere sexual peccadillo and Bush wasn’t for lying us into an unjust war resulting in tens of thousands of deaths, the whole impeachment process is nothing but a farce, and any mention of it in relation to anything any president has done is nothing more than hot air.