President Barack Obama last month acted forcefully in a series of executive actions intended to break the D.C. logjam on immigration reform. His moves could affect nearly 5 million people in the U.S. illegally.
Condemn his unilateral policymaking, if you want, but at least he stepped up. Given ongoing inaction in Congress, Obama’s big push on the issue was to be expected.
The hard work of beginning to repair our immigration system should have fallen to Congress. That legislators haven’t yet stepped up is a shame, and tragic even for the millions fenced between the feuding executive and legislative branches of our government. Jumping on this work would be an excellent first task for the soon-to-be GOP legislative majority.
Congress should now own up to the lawmaking part of its job description. Voters elected congresspeople to achieve results, not politick 24/7. Americans deserve the stability of sound, enacted laws — not incessant, snarky sound bites that leave critical work undone.
That won’t happen if the volleys over immigration continue. It all seems little more than a game of the cynical, political sort. That amounts to a sorry situation all around – one in which the words “governance” or “leadership” need not be used in describing the current standstill.
It is far past time to end the political two-step over immigration and to begin moving aggressively toward a comprehensive, workable solution that is worthy of our history as a nation of, yes, laws, but also one that keeps the Statue of Liberty’s torch lighted for profound reasons central to our core. As in we’re a country built and carried across the centuries by new arrivals to our shores.
What we’re getting now instead is political blowback — from Capitol Hill and conservative-held statehouses around the nation. So far this month, 23 states, including Georgia, have joined Texas in going to federal court to stop Obama’s unilateral immigration moves.
For sure, there seem to be legitimate constitutional issues here worth an impartial hearing. But the states don’t aid their case in the court of thoughtful public opinion by filing legal paperwork that, in part, reads more like red-meat press releases to the party faithful than sober assertions of this or that lines of law. From the motion for a preliminary injunction filed in federal court earlier this month: “The president’s action has an Alice-in-Wonderland quality – demanding that Congress pass a law to prevent him from making his own.” “The President has turned the Constitution on its head by suggesting that he has legislative powers and that Congress has veto powers that must be exercised to thwart his executive actions.”
The back-and-forth partisan battle is entertaining, but only in a shake-your-head sort of way. That’s because Congress could best test the President’s motives by thumping a hefty piece of passed immigration legislation onto his desk for signature.
Lawmakers have a template for action in a bill long ago passed by the Senate that spells out specific, expensive steps to harden the border. They include moves such as doubling the size of the U.S. Border Patrol, adding hundreds of miles of fencing and taking many other actions to make illegal entry more arduous.
Going back to work on real legislation would represent positive leadership from a body that currently seems to prefer scoring political points to resolving big, prickly problems. That’s no way to govern – for any party.
The citizenry seems to concur. A Rasmussen Reports survey released Thanksgiving week found that, among likely voters, only 8 percent gave good or excellent marks to Congress. That is a pitiful standing by any measure.
Yet, substantive change doesn’t seem to be on the immediate horizon. In the waning days of this year, Congress got busy on immigration – via H.R 5759. Approved by the House shortly after Obama’s action last month, the “Preventing Executive Overreach on Immigration Act” declares Obama’s moves to be null and void.
House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, explained things this way on his blog: “The president thumbed his nose at the American people with his actions on immigration, and the House will make clear today that we are rejecting his unilateral actions. And then the United States Senate should take this bill up and pass it. For the outgoing Senate Democrat majority to do anything less would be an act of monumental arrogance. The American people elected us to heed their will and not bow to the whims of the White House that regards the legislative process established by the Constitution as little more than a nuisance.”
Translation: We’ve thumbed our noses right back at the president.
In this legislative snippet that’s now before the U.S. Senate, you don’t have to read far to get to the sponsors’ assertion that Congress, not the President, has responsibility “to establish an Uniform rule of Naturalization. As the Supreme Court found in Galvan v. Press, ‘that the formulation of … policies [pertaining to the entry of aliens and their right to remain here] is entrusted exclusively to Congress has become about as firmly imbedded (sic) in the legislative and judicial tissues of our body politic as any aspect of our government.’ ”
They’re right. Congress is responsible for setting immigration policy. Responsibility should entail action in this instance.
That requires calling off the political games and getting to work. Voters should demand just that.
