Tag Archives: immigration

Gov.-elect Abbott saying (far) right things

Texas Gov.-elect Greg Abbott, once upon a time, was considered a mainstream Republican. Reasoned, cautious, yet dedicated to basic conservative principles of smaller government and low taxes.

Then he got bit by the tea party bug.

The state’s next governor now declares he plans to sue President Obama over that executive order issued this week that delays deportation of 5 million illegal immigrants, more than 1 million of whom live in Texas.

http://www.texastribune.org/2014/11/21/abbott-obamas-order-violates-constitutional-provis/

The Texas Tribune reports: “In a statement, Abbott said Obama’s order ‘circumvented Congress and deliberately bypassed the will of the American people. I am prepared to immediately challenge President Obama in court, securing our state’s sovereignty and guaranteeing the rule of law as it was intended under the Constitution,’ Abbott added.”

Well, consider this for just a moment. President George H.W. Bush in 1990 issued an executive order that did the very same thing for 1.5 million illegal immigrants. Bush, a Republican, did it for compassionate reasons. Didn’t the current president cite compassion for families in issuing his own order?

Where, dare I ask, were the calls of indignation when President Bush issued the executive order? It was done quietly, with little fanfare.

That was then. Today’s climate seems to require fanfare, blustering, posturing, finger-pointing, threats and challenges.

Therein perhaps lies the crux of what’s going on here.

Greg Abbott, the once reflective and deliberative man of the bench, has become just as shrill as the rest of what has become the “mainstream” Texas Republican Party.

 

When in doubt, House, sue

Congress is going to court with the president of the United States.

The House of Representatives filed its long-awaited lawsuit against Barack Obama, contending the president misused his executive authority to “rewrite the law” regarding the Affordable Care Act.

I’ll stipulate that I’m no constitutional lawyer, but I’ll bet the farm that Obama didn’t break the law.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/11/house-files-obamacare-lawsuit-113089.html?hp=b1_l1

He did what the Constitution empowers him to do.

It’s curious, too, that Congress filed the suit the day after Obama delivered that long awaited executive order on immigration, although the lawsuit deals with the ACA exclusively. I guess Speaker John Boehner just couldn’t take it any longer.

The lawsuit, along with the talk of impeachment, is utter nonsense.

Boehner is grandstanding in the worst possible way. It’s not even clear the court will hear the lawsuit, let alone allow to go to trial and be decided by a jury.

The most hilarious aspect of this lawsuit are the claims by Republicans that the president is “overusing” the executive authority granted to him. It’s funny because Obama has signed fewer executive orders than almost any of his immediate predecessors. Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, the most recent two-term Republican presidents, signed more. Where was the outcry then?

We’ll now get to see how this circus plays out.

Meanwhile, some serious legislating needs to get done. How about seeing the GOP craft a bill on, say, immigration and health care? They say they can do better. Let’s have it.

 

Immigration reform = family values

Remember the early 1990s when “family values” became a mantra for politicians seeking to return to the core values of our nation?

Vice President Dan Quayle once chided the TV character “Murphy Brown” for having a child out of wedlock. The debate was joined.

Two decades later, the term “family values” has taken a new turn. It became part of President Barack Obama’s pitch to fix a broken immigration system.

The president’s pitch is nearly perfect.

Obama went on national TV today to tell the nation he would sign an executive order that keeps families together. Mom and Dad may have entered the nation illegally, but brought their children along when they were small — or perhaps bore their children in this country, an act that gave the kids instant U.S. citizenship.

The president’s order defers the deportation of some 5 million illegal immigrants. His aim, among other things, is to keep families together. Obama told the nation that it’s impractical to deport all those who came here illegally. Must we deport their children? And what about those children who are citizens simply by virtue of their birth in the United States of America?

This won’t deter Republicans from challenging the president. The new Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell and House Speaker John Boehner are vowing unspecified actions to fight the president’s action.

Well, let’s have that fight and let’s allow the public to decide whether it’s right to separate families, or to uproot entire families after they’ve found a better life in the Land of Opportunity.

 

TV networks miss a chance to engage viewers

This post will be brief, so I’ll get right to the point.

The major broadcast networks and a major cable network are blowing a chance to stay engaged in the immigration by declining to broadcast the president’s remarks tonight on the executive order he is about to issue.

http://money.cnn.com/2014/11/19/media/networks-and-obama-speech/index.html

ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox have said “no thanks” to carrying the speech live. CNN and PBS will carry it.

Given all the debate, discussion, finger-pointing, threats and lies told to and about all sides in this debate, I would have bet the proverbial farm that the networks would carry it live. It’s kind of a big deal, given what congressional Republicans have threatened to do when the president signs the order.

Silly me. The broadcast networks have dramas and comedies to show.

 

Cruz overstates his case once more

Ted Cruz just cracks me up.

Except that I’m not laughing.

He’s written an essay in which he accuses the president of the United States of acting like a monarch. Barack Obama plans to issue an executive order that tweaks federal immigration policy. He’s going around Congress, which includes the freshman Republican senator from Texas. Yes, Ted Cruz.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/11/president-obama-is-not-a-monarch-113028.html?hp=c4_3#.VG35X1J0yt9

What the senator and his fellow critics of the president keep ignoring is that previous presidents, including some notable Republicans, have done precisely the same thing that’s about to occur with this president. Where was the congressional outrage then? Well, there wasn’t any.

The link attached to this blog post also notes that Texas may sue the president over his executive order. That’s kind of strange, too, given that I’ve read reports in recent days about how Texas is going to benefit tremendously when the president defers deportation of millions of illegal immigrants. Many thousands of them live and work in Texas and they would be able, under the order, to come out of the shadows and work openly, pay taxes and perhaps start working their way toward legal residency status, if not outright citizenship.

That doesn’t stop loudmouths like the Texas Cruz Missile from overstating his case, which he does with annoying frequency.

 

Columnist gets it right on immigration battle

Ruben Navarrette is far from being a flaming leftist Barack Obama sympathizer.

He’s a mainstream conservative journalist and commentator who in an essay posted on CNN.com has posited the notion that any talk of impeaching the president over an expected executive order would be a foolish overreach.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/16/opinion/navarrette-immigration-not-impeachable-offense/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

He is so correct. I wish I could shake his hand right now.

At issue is an expected order the president will issue that could do a number of things to improve the immigration system. He’s sought to do it legislatively, but his congressional foes won’t let it happen. They’ve bottled immigration reform up. Obama has warned them repeatedly that he’d take action and now he appears ready to do it.

I’ve noted already that I don’t want him to act just yet.

When he does, though, it’s likely to ignite a fiery response from the tea party wing of the Republicans who control the House and are about to take control in January of the Senate.

An executive order reportedly is going to do a number of things. It would boost border security. It would delay deportation of about 5 million illegal immigrants. It’s the deportation delay that has Republicans’ underwear all knotted up.

Navarrette’s main point is that none of this constitutes an “impeachable offense.”

The president would be acting solely within his authority granted by the U.S. Constitution, according to Navarrette.

The essayist notes: “Republicans have no trouble deflecting criticism by reminding Latino voters that Obama is in charge of deportations. So, instead of threatening the suicidal tantrums of a government shutdown or impeachment, conservatives should pipe down and let him be in charge of deportations. That doesn’t just mean deciding who goes but also who stays.”

Let’s can the impeachment rhetoric and get down to the business of governing, shall we?

 

Reagan and Bush did it; why not Obama?

Republicans in Congress are getting loaded for bear if that Democratic rascal in the White House follows through with a threat to execute an order that delays deportation of some 5 million illegal immigrants.

What they’ll do precisely in response to a now-expected executive order remains unclear.

Maybe they should follow the congressional led set when two earlier presidents did precisely the same thing, using exactly the same constitutional device.

That would be: nothing.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/15/reagan-bush-immigration-deportation_n_6164068.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000013

At issue is whether President Obama will use his executive authority to delay those deportations and, by the way, strengthen security along our southern border. Congress wants him to wait. So do I, for that matter. Congressional Republicans are threatening to hamstring confirmation hearings on the president’s pick to be attorney general, Loretta Lynch. Heck, they might even sue the president.

The most troublesome — and ridiculous — notion being field tested in the court of public opinion is impeachment.

Let’s look briefly at history.

Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush did the same thing. One heard nary a peep out of Congress, let alone the Democrats who controlled the place at the time.

Congress enacted an immigration law in 1986, but in the following year, President Reagan gave immigration officials the power to cover the children of illegal immigrants who were granted amnesty under the law. As the Huffington Post reported: “Spouses and children of couples in which one parent qualified for amnesty but the other did not remained subject to deportation, leading to efforts to amend the 1986 law.”

Along came President Bush in 1989. The Huffington Post reports: “In a parallel to today, the Senate acted in 1989 to broaden legal status to families but the House never took up the bill. Through the INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service), Bush advanced a new ‘family fairness’ policy that put in place the Senate measure. Congress passed the policy into law by the end of the year as part of broader immigration legislation. ‘It’s a striking parallel,’ said Mark Noferi of the pro-immigration American Immigration Council. ‘Bush Sr. went big at the time. He protected about 40 percent of the unauthorized population. Back then that was up to 1.5 million. Today that would be about 5 million.'”

What gives with the current crop of yahoos calling the shots on Capitol Hill?

Oh, I forgot. The tea party/nimrod wing of the GOP vows to shake things up and no longer do things the way they’ve been done in the past.

That must include allowing the president of the United States to actually lead.

 

AG should knife the boss in the back?

Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Mike Lee of Utah are making an impossible demand of the woman selected by President Obama to become the nation’s next attorney general.

They want Loretta Lynch to state up front whether a presidential executive order regarding U.S. immigration policy is constitutional and legal. More to the point, they are demanding that she declare such an action unconstitutional and illegal.

Let’s think about this for a moment.

What they’re demanding is that the woman who wants to be attorney general stick a dagger in the back of the individual who has nominated her to that high office.

Cruz and Lee do not appear interested in simply hearing her out. Both men already have declared that they believe such a move — which the president has all but telegraphed will occur — doesn’t pass constitutional muster.

They are among congressional Republicans who already are angry over Obama’s use of executive authority to tweak and tinker with the Affordable Care Act. These men both are dead set against reforming immigration policy at least during the current congressional session.

So now they’re threatening to hold the attorney general nomination hostage to their own agenda.

What’s more, they’re asking the AG-designate to betray the president who’s nominated her.

Good luck with that, senators.

GOP scores sweep; now let's govern … actually

The deed is done.

Republicans got their “wave” to sweep them into control of the Senate, with an eight-, maybe nine-seat pickup in the U.S. Senate. What’s more, they picked up a dozen more seats in the House to cement control of that body.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/senate-control-at-stake-in-todays-midterm-elections/2014/11/04/e882353e-642c-11e4-bb14-4cfea1e742d5_story.html

The only undecided race will be in Louisiana, which is going to a runoff. Democratic U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu appears to be in trouble there. Big surprise, huh?

What happens now?

Despite all the good economic news, there appears to be rampant discontent out there with a Democratic administration and its friends in Congress. So the voters spoke, tossing out Democratic incumbents and turning seats over where Democrats had retired.

Republicans say they want to work with the president where possible. I’m not yet ready to swill that drink.

Senate Majority Leader-in-waiting Mitch McConnell had declared his primary goal in 2009 was to make Barack Obama a one-term president. It didn’t work out that way. So now he wants to actually govern — he says.

We’ve got this immigration thing hanging over the Congress; that oil pipeline known as “Keystone” needs to be decided; the president has an attorney general appointment to make; and, oh yeah, the Affordable Care Act still is on the table, even though it’s working and insuring Americans.

How is Congress going to get past all those differences? And how is the White House going to reconcile itself with the change in power in the upper legislative chamber?

My friends on the right are crowing this morning that Democrat Harry Reid no longer will run the Senate. They now believe Hillary Clinton’s presidential “inevitability” in 2016 has been damaged by this shifting power base. They think the president has been made irrelevant as he finishes out his tenure in the White House.

I shall now remind my right-leaning friends of something critical.

The 2016 political roadmap looks a bit different than the 2014 map. Democrats will be positioned to take over some key Republican Senate seats in a presidential election year, which historically bodes quite well for Democrats.

This was the Republicans’ year and their time. Nice going, folks.

It’s time now to actually govern and to show that we can actually keep moving this country forward — which it has been doing for the past six years.

 

 

Is Jeb right for the GOP base?

All this chatter about Jeb Bush seeking the Republican presidential nomination has a lot of us wondering.

Is the GOP base ready to back another Bush for the White House, especially one who swims against the base’s tide on immigration?

Bush is the former governor of Florida. He’d be the third member of this famous political clan to seek the presidency. His dad and older brother got there.

Jeb is a bit different from either of the two presidents, George H.W. and George W., although “W” also is seen by some in his party as “soft” on immigration, meaning that he has staked out reasonable positions on the subject.

Jeb Bush is married to a Hispanic. His children, therefore, share their mother’s ethnic background.

Who can forget, Grandpa Bush — the 41st president of the United States — referring to Jeb’s kids as “the little brown ones”?

Well, the little brown ones are grown up and one of them, George P. Bush, is running for Texas land commissioner and is likely to win that seat to start his own climb up the political ladder.

Jeb is seen by some critics as a “Democrat light,” meaning that he’s too moderate to fit the mold of what has become of the modern Republican Party. It’s that immigration matter that keeps getting in the way of many in his party from endorsing him outright.

Here is a news flash: Republicans need someone like Jeb Bush if they have any hope — ever! — of winning over the Hispanic vote in this country. Thus, if the GOP continues to toe the hard line on immigration by threatening to round up and deport all illegal immigrants, presumably from Latin America, then the once-great party will find itself peering into the White House from the street.

Jeb Bush takes a more compassionate view of immigration and that, precisely, is the kind of message his party needs to convey.

George P. Bush thinks his dad is going to run for president. Good. I hope he does — and delivers plenty of heartburn to the hard-core base within the Republican Party.