Goodlatte issues statement on Obama’s immigration order
Bob Goodlatte. Photo by Sam Dean, The Roanoke Times.
Earlier today, President Obama announced his administration would stop deporting illegal immigrants who came to this country as children.
In response, Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Roanoke County, has issued the following statement:
“Today’s politically motivated announcement from the Obama Administration that it is going to immediately stop deporting illegal immigrants who came to this country and instead grant them work permits is an outrageous abuse of power by the Executive Branch. With this announcement President Obama has completely bypassed the Congress, which is charged with writing our immigration laws, in order to grant possible amnesty to many illegal immigrants. This policy shift is in direct conflict with the law of our land.
Not only do I believe President Obama lacks the authority to make such a change to our immigration laws but I find it particularly egregious that he would want to hand out work permits to nearly 1 million illegal immigrants when many Americans are struggling to find work themselves.
America is a land of great opportunity and promise. Our nation was founded by those who sought a better life and our strength and diversity come from our immigrant heritage. However, our nation was also founded upon a set of principles, among them the rule of law and fairness and today’s announcement by the Obama Administration is contrary to these very principles.”
June 15, 2012 - 5:22 PM
Yes, how dare the president do something we can’t obstruct!
Talk about politically motivated! – Goodlatte leaves out that the reason these immigrants are being cut some slack is because they were brought here as kids. For many, this is the only country they know, and they didn’t bring themselves here, and Goodlatte wants them to be illegal immigrants. Why not tell us that, Bob?
Interesting….Romney came out in support of some of this today.
Well at least we can count on Goodlatte and the TP/GOP not to do anything “politically motivated”! What a putz.
For 3 and a half years, Obama has been trtying to get the Congress to act on immigration reform. Every bill has been filibustered in te Senate and/or destroyed in the House. The original immigration reform bill which was developed by John McCain, Obama, and others and had bipartisan support was shot down as soon as the Repuiblicans decided that their only purpose in life for the past 3 years and 6 months was to make Obama a one term President. At last the President is showing gumption and calling them to account. Good for him.
Art..Please come to my hometown and bring your thoughts with you..I have a few doors I would like for you to knock on…I`m sure these 16 month unemployed would appreciate your pathetic views….Please drive by and pick me up as I wouldn`t want to miss out on anything…If I were you, I`d think about bringing some protection.
Hell yes…bring `em all in..We`re only teetering finacially now ! Obama can`t create jobs for the people of the USA now…what will he do with another million people ? When the winds are right, you can get a whiff of Venzuela.
If only they were coming for HANDOUTS rather than employment.
So you guys will be fine when President Romney lowers tax rates unilaterally by announcing that his administration won’t prosecute citizens who pay a lower than statutory rate?
Wonder if the prez ask these folks about illegal aliens?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIJAHGsOZ58&feature=related
Dave is right, Congress has not acted in any meaningful way on immigration. However, that is a byproduct of our system of government. The President is not a king and just because the President cannot get Congress to do what he wants doesn’t allow him to usurp what is explicitly left to Congress in the Constitution. I remain just as frustrated as the next person with Congress and the way they don’t ever seem to get anything done, but the fact remains that the President has no authority to rule by fiat and bypass Congress on this issue.
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Testing, use at Library
Jeff Dodo and the wingnuts (sounds like a garage band) conveniently overlook the fact that these people are already working. This Executive order (which is, by the way, Constitutional) takes the fear of arrest and deportation out of their lives. Do Republicans really want to put people back to work? Of course not, a falling unemployment rate might help the president’s re-election chances. Spare us the faux outrage.
Does anyone actually believe anything this idiot Goodlatte says. The man is the epitome of a sexist and a racist and it is not worth listening to his venom. He panders to the lowest of the low.
“Goodlatte wants them to be illegal immigrants.”
They ARE illegal immigrants. That is a fact!
“Politically motivated”…how precious coming from Bob “Let’s Read the Constitution Outloud” Goodlatte. Because THAT sure created a lot of jobs.
6,
“….Please drive by and pick me up as I wouldn`t want to miss out on anything…”
So jethro’s not on the bus line, I guess. Sweet. Do your 16 month thus far unemployed friends also live down in the hollar, too? You would have thunk these guys could have made decent living manufacturing meth out of the double wide but I guess the bath salt thing is sweeping dodo’s trailer park and putting the kibosh on the quality of living thing.
Democrats controlled congress for the first two years of Obama’s administration. They never addressed immigration. Heck, they didn’t even bother with a budget and still blamed those obstructing republicans.
Intestingly enough, they WERE able to pass healthcare reform which was a kiss to the insurance industry without a single GOP vote. I wonder why the GOP wasn’t blamed for obstructing that?
http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/executive-orders/2012.html
http://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/executive-orders
Having checked both of these places, I can’t seem to find this ‘Executive Order’… If someone could provide a link, I would very much like to read it, since the news reports seem to say the President just said he won’t enforce current law.
In the meantime, could I just ask those in favor of this EO (or fiat) two questions?
1. Are you also ok with an eventual ‘right wing’ President who selectively enforces U.S. law? (say on assault weapons or something)
2. Where is the constitutional authority for executive orders expressed or implied?
Yes this is a political move by the Pres. but that is fairly standard on both sides. My problem with this President is his audacity in by passing Congress whenever someone dares to disagree with him. They are elected by the people same as he is and they do speak for a majority. This is not a dictatorsihip!!!!! Where his opinion is the only one that matters. Once again he has overstepped! He doesn’t respect any American unless he can manipulate them. He must go!!!!!!
Haw haw, Mittens Romney. What a choice of desperation. I’m pretty sure Obama will get his second term. He’s actually been a “moderate” as far as his political decisions have gone. Romney, he’s a cold fish, viewed as one of the wealthy elite, mistrusted by many even in his own party. I just don’t see it happening.
Seriously? You think that the question is an “…eventual ‘right wing’ President who selectively enforces U.S. law“? What that a joke? “U.S. Presidents have issued executive orders since 1789″: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_order
Bush/Cheney issued 291 Total Executive orders.
http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/executive-orders/wbush.html
Things like: “Gutting the Presidential Records Act”
“Blocking Stem-Cell Research”
“Finessing the Geneva Conventions”
“Handing the Keys to the Vice President”
“Free Rein in Iraq”
“Going After Troublemakers in Iraq”
“Eyes and Ears in the Agencies”
“Letting Religious Groups Call the Hiring Shots”
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/recycled/2009/01/ten_to_toss.html
When it takes a 2/3 majority to do even simple business, no way the “Democrats controlled congress for the first two years of Obama’s administration“. Having a majority does not equal “control” any longer. That is just not accurate. I doubt they can vote to break for lunch with just a simple majority vote.
No Sandi, it wasn’t a joke. I didn’t say they hadn’t used it. I just asked for the constitutional basis. Where do you cross the line of the separation of powers? Articles 1 & 2 define the roles of the legislative and executive branches. Just point to the language is all I’m asking.
And there’s always the question – what happens next?
Let’s just say for the sake of argument, your guy loses, and President Romney instructs the HHS Dept not to enforce provisions within the PPACA by executive decree. Or the IRS to stop collecting CG taxes, or the EPA not to enforce it’s regulations on coal-burning power plants.
Not that I think those things will happen, but if they did, would those also be acceptable actions for a President?
And I still haven’t seen a link to this Executive Order concerning the subject of the post.
http://180movie.com/
“Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it”.
watch this please
It may just change the way you vote.
Only if they are stupid enough to fall for lies and propaganda, will.
Gregory Honeycutt, I do not know where the line was, I only know it was crossed and left behind long ago. Obama has not invented the wheel. The ODS is so strong that you folks can see nothing else. Sad.
Sandi, what’s sad is, of all (the left-leaning) people on this blog, I would have thought you’d get it. It’s *not* about President Obama. It’s about the next POTUS, or the next, or the next.
In case any of you missed it, here it is – Many of the actions taken and EO’s issued by this President are directly related to either the immediate predecessor, or a more distant one. Sandi is exactly right when she says “Obama has not invented the wheel.” (well, not literally) President Obama is just the most recent occupant of the Oval Office to expand the executive branch’s power far beyond the scope laid out in our Constitution.
We can have a legitimate debate over the subject of immigration reform. But we cannot have a President acting outside the law. Congress writes the laws, the President enforces them. Everything else is illegitimate.
Interesting articles:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-12-09-Mexico-immigrants_N.htm
http://protectourborder.net/index1.html
Greg Honeycutt
The problem is we cannot have a legitimate debate on immigration policy.
We had one months ago in 2010. The House of Representatives passed a bill. It had the support of 55 senators. But Republicans in the Senate blocked it due to their filibuster power and the rewuirement for a super majority to break the filibuster. This has been the case for all significant legislation during the Obama years except for the btief time
between July 2009 and January 2010.And since that time, the Republicans, dancing to the tea party tune, have done nothing but obstruct, obfuscate,
and denagogue the issue.
Gregory Honeycutt, I get that you don’t like it, but Obama is not “acting outside the law”. He has that prosecution prerogative and he is choosing not to use it and divert the issue for future decisions and devote the ICE resources to getting rid of the criminal and negative illegal immigrants as a priority. He has deported more illegal immigrants than Bush FGS. It is a reprieve not an amnesty and who believes these people were going anywhere in the first place?
I ranted and raved like a mad woman, even cited the true Conservatives who believed that Bush/Cheney were pushing boundaries that this nation would have turned apoplectic if Hillary Clinton (presumed next president at the time) used them, back in the day, and all to no avail, the Cons were not having it. So now, no, I do not see the urgency anymore. It is politics and they will take it as far as they can. It is a given.
http://blogs.roanoke.com/roundtable/2010/11/editorial-dont-cause-a-scene-in-security/
http://blogs.roanoke.com/roundtable/2009/07/saturdays-letters-to-the-editor-7/
OK, Dave… If the opposition seeks to obstruct the will of the President, it’s fine for the chief executive to act unilaterally? Keep that in mind when the next Republican takes the office. By acquiescing, you are granting Romney this same authority.
Someone finally found what I was looking for… turns out, this was not an ‘executive order’ after all, but an ‘administrative memo’. So that explains why it couldn’t be found on either the Federal Register or White House websites.
http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/s1-exercising-prosecutorial-discretion-individuals-who-came-to-us-as-children.pdf
Congressional rules are an entirely separate issue dave. The issue, (at least for me) here is not immigration reform, it’s the law. The guy charged with ultimately enforcing the law says he won’t. In a ‘memo’.
And you know nothing about the Tea Party. =)
Here is some interesting commentary on what the memo says versus what it does: http://cis.org/feere/obamas-administrative-dream-act-myths
Actually JHL, by “acquiescing” previously, you granted Obama this authority. History often repeats itself, unfortunate as that may be.
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07132007/transcript2.html
JHL
1. Romney will never
be President
2. The law creating Homeland Security and the powers granted to thast agency to establish regulations gives them the authority to take this step.
3. When the opposition can do nothing but obstruct for the sake of obstructing, smart people look for legal ways to accomplish what needs to be accomplished. The Obama administration found one.
4. What eally burns the Republicans is that they have been outsmarted–yet again.
Gregg Honeycutt— Five minutes on the local tae party website tells me all I need to know about them.
The tea party didn’t do so well in the recent Congressional primaries.
Where were you guys when President Cheney decided that torture was legal?
Oh, the hypocrisy!
See, Art, those are the nonsense kind of comments that make me not want to bother with you guys. They don’t have anything to do with the discussion at hand – just the electronic equivalent to sticking your tongue out.
dave on the other hand came closer. Though point #1 at JHL is just his wish, and point #4 is just a jab, Points #2 & 3 are valid, at least for argument. Sometime I’d be up for a debate on the legitimacy of DHS, which btw is a Bush-era creation that is VERY frowned upon by most of us.
If you’d actually spent 5 minutes on our website, you’d know we’re not very big fans of the Republican Party either, at least not for the sake of political parties. It just fits your narrative better to say things like that, and that’s fine, whatever… the people you’d like know better, and the rest don’t care. When was the last time you publicly announced a ten-term Democrat Congressman was an epic failure? Or when was the first time?
The fact is, after all the accusations of racism, bigotry, and hypocrisy of the past three years, the candidates we favored most (in the recent primaries) were a white female retired Air Force officer , and a black pastor from Chesapeake. No they didn’t win, but thanks to the efforts of some Tea Party folks, at least there were candidates we could vote for without gagging.
“See, Art…that makes me not want to bother with you guys.”
Feeling’s mutual, Greg. All you folks do is throw a wrench in the works.
And for the record, I consider both Virginia Senators epic failures.
Gregory Honeycutt, it is beyond doubt that millions upon millions of Americans would love to see a viable third party. If the TEA Party had been a serious contender they would not have meshed and taken so much GOP money, influence and assistance. You cannot disavow the connection while feeding at the trough, that just makes you an ungrateful step-child.
The TEA Party is no more a third party, a third choice or a third distinction than I am. It is a pipe dream of some very frustrated libertarians and deep conservatives but it is still a pipe dream. Truthfully, you have a better chance of manipulating the GOP than of becoming a third party. It is a done deal, stick with it, embrace it and move on.
That any of you work to elect Romney (and you will), proves my point for me.