Art credit: Oneoldvet.com
Lots of pundits
have been weighing in on the fallout from Eric Cantor’s stunning defeat in last
Tuesday’s primary to Dave Brat. Thomas Sowell has this perspective on the GOP
elite’s position on amnesty “immigration reform”:
Apparently the Republican leadership in the House of
Representatives -- which is to say, House Speaker John Boehner and [soon to be
former] Majority Leader Eric Cantor -- thinks that amnesty is not amnesty if
you call it "immigration reform" and toss in some fig-leaf requirements
before the amnesty kicks in.
Immigration laws are the only laws that are discussed almost
entirely in terms of what can be done to help those who have broken the law.
Some want to help a little and some want to help a lot. But amnesty lite is
still amnesty.
Some people seem to think that amnesty is not amnesty if you
throw in requirements for citizenship. Amnesty is not some esoteric concept. It
means that you are not going to be punished for breaking the law -- and that
simply brings laws into contempt. Denying citizenship is not a punishment
because crossing the border illegally does not entitle you to citizenship.
Providing a legal status short of citizenship is not punishment either.
There is no requirement for either amnesty or for citizenship
that President Obama cannot ignore or dilute unilaterally, as he has ignored or
diluted existing immigration laws, as well as other laws. Barack Obama is the
biggest reason to pass no immigration "reform" laws until after he is
gone.
It doesn't matter what immigration policies you believe in if
you don't control your borders -- and the vast numbers of minors flooding
across our borders today show that the Obama administration has no intention of
controlling the borders. They are more concerned with controlling the border
guards and ordering them not to take pictures that show the public what is
happening.
If you are serious about controlling the borders, then you pass
laws to control the borders first. Some years later, after you can see whether
the border has been controlled or not -- you can start discussing what our
national immigration laws should be.
Otherwise, "comprehensive" immigration reform means
granting some form of amnesty up front and promising to control the border
later. How many more times are we going to fall for that bait and switch fraud?
Read the rest
here.
Steven Hayward at Power Line speculated on the possibility of President Obama issuing
executive pardons to ALL illegal immigrants. After the mid-terms, of course.
Let’s look down
the road a bit from here. We know that President Obama is enamored of
executive power. He said on climate change that he wouldn’t wait on
Congress, and we saw last week his bold use of the Clean Air Act to impose a
regulatory scheme that Congress would never pass. He’s said much the same
thing about immigration. So what might he do?
How about this:
after the election next fall, especially if the GOP takes the Senate and with
an eye to the 2016 election prospects for Democrats, Obama might well decide to
use his pardon power to grant a blanket pardon to all illegal aliens presently in
the United States. This would not, strictly speaking, be a
legal abuse; the president’s pardon power is unconditional in the
Constitution. But you can imagine the firestorm it would generate.
. . . I
think the odds of a blanket amnesty-by-pardon are much better than people
think. Some enterprising reporter ought to ask about this at a White House
press conference some time soon.
But
yesterday, a caller to Rush Limbaugh raised an interesting legal point:
CALLER:
I just want to point out a problem with [Steven Hayward’s] pardon theory.. . .
The theory is you can be pardoned for prior actions and you can't be punished
for them. But assuming that you're still in the United States and you still
don't have a legal right to be here, you're immediately as guilty after the
pardon as you are before the pardon.
RUSH: I
don't think so.
CALLER:
It doesn't give you a status to stay in the United States.
RUSH:
Well, Mr. Hayward thinks it does. By the way, you're the first guy who said you
can't do it. I've run it by a lot of people. Yeah, there's no constitutional
prohibition against something like that because --
CALLER:
Well, you can, if they were not in the United States and you pardoned them and
they didn't come back illegally, they would be free. But assuming they're still
in the United States and they're still here illegally, they're immediately
guilty for actions that happen after the pardon.
RUSH:
You can pardon somebody for all future.
CALLER:
Actually, I don't think that's true. I don't think you can immunize --
RUSH:
Well, even if you can't, by pardoning the fact that they are here illegally,
the next day they don't start being illegal all over again, it's been pardoned.
You're thinking they can only be pardoned up to that day. Right?
CALLER:
Right. You can be pardoned up to that day, but if you don't have a legal right
to be inside in the United States, you're not a citizen --
RUSH:
Well, then how did Bill Clinton pardon Marc Rich and then say, and, by the way,
you can never come back to this country?
CALLER:
Well, what he said is Marc Rich is pardoned for these acts which have happened
before.
RUSH:
Right.
CALLER:
If you violate the law after you've been pardoned, you're not immune. You're
subject again for the acts that occurred after the pardon.
The
rest of Rush’s segment is here.
Here's the bottom line from Steven Hayward for all of us, as we head into the mid-terms:
Therefore, a modest
suggestion: every GOP candidate—especially for the Senate—should force
Democratic candidates on the record before the campaign on the question of how
they would respond if President Obama uses his pardon power to grant amnesty to
every illegal alien currently in the country. Get them on record now,
ahead of the election.
