Obama is showing us constantly that he doesn’t like the legislative process and instead wants to take unilateral executive action to change the law whenever it suits him. He’s made significant modifications to Obamacare, welfare requirements, and US immigration law all without congressional approval, making some key figures call for his impeachment. Threatening Congress with executive orders if it decides not to act isn’t how our government works. The sole legislative authority lies in the House and Senate. The president is not a king. Yet again we have an example of Obama’s disregard for the Constitution. This time he’s making changes to immigration law to allow immigrants with “limited” terrorist contact into the US. Unbelievable. The Daily Caller reports: The Obama administration has issued new exemptions to a law that bars certain asylum-seekers and refugees who provided “limited material support” to terrorists who are believed to pose no threat from the U.S. The Department of Homeland Security and the State Department published the new exemptions Wednesday in the Federal Register to narrow a ban in the Immigration and Nationality Act excluding refugees and asylum seekers who had provided limited material support, no matter how minor, to terrorists. “These exemptions cover five kinds of limited material support that have adversely and unfairly affected refugees and asylum seekers with no tangible connection to terrorism: material support that was insignificant in amount or provided incidentally in the course of everyday social, commercial, family or humanitarian interactions, or under significant pressure,” a DHS official explained to The Daily Caller. Of course, DHS and the State Dept. think these changes are justified: “In addition to rigorous background vetting, including checks coordinated across several government agencies, these exemptions will only be applied on a case-by-case basis after careful review and all security checks have cleared,” the official added. “This exemption process is vital to advancing the U.S. government’s twin goal of protecting the world’s most vulnerable persons while ensuring U.S. national security and public safety.” [...] According to DHS, Section 212(d)(3)(B) of the INA allows either the secretary of state or DHS secretary in consultation with each other and with the U.S. Attorney General “to determine that certain terrorism bars of the INA do not apply.” Jessica Vaughan from the Center for Immigration Studies came out to attack this move on the part of the Obama Administration: While Vaughan conceded that there are a number of immigrants seeking protection who have been denied due to unintentional contact with terrorists, she sees the exemptions as likely another opportunity for people to get around the system. “[T]here is a very legitimate question as to whether the administration actually has the authority to change the law in this way,” Vaughan wrote in an email to TheDC. “It seems to me that they are announcing that they will be disregarding yet another law written by Congress that they don’t like and are replacing it with their own guidelines, which in this case appear to be extremely broad and vague, and which are sure to be exploited by those seeking to game our generous refugee admissions program.” Vaughan pointed out that this administration will likely fail to rigorously check the backgrounds of individuals who may be admitted through this exemption, leading to the admission of some individuals into the country who shouldn’t be here: “If the recent past is any guide, those evaluating these cases will be ordered to ignore red flags in the applications, especially if the applicant is supported by one of the many advocacy groups that have the ear of senior DHS staff,” she explained. “The administration already approves of the admission of gang members as asylees and criminals in the DACA program and grants of prosecutorial discretion, so I don’t expect them to be troubled by the admission of terrorists and garden variety fraudsters in our refugee program. This is how we end up with families like the Tsarnaev brothers [the Boston marathon bombers], who were originally admitted for political asylum.” Vaughan pointed out that in some cases, only the word of the individual would be used to make a determination. “In my experience as a former State Dept. consular official, I know that there are some qualified applicants that get excluded because we cannot be sure if they are truly associated with terrorist or criminal groups, but it is better to err on the side of caution when it comes to national security and public safety,” she explained. “After all, there are usually other resettlement options for these people – they don’t have to come to the U.S., even if that’s what they want.” Although rethinking some of these nuances in immigration law may be reasonable, we can’t trust this administration to do this correctly. Nor can we trust their motives when they’re bypassing Congress under dubious authority. When in doubt, it’s always best to leave these issues to the best legislative judgment of Congress. This actually underscores yet another issue in the current legislative process: Congress tends to write laws so as to give overbroad authority to the executive to enforce and interpret the statute, which then runs with it and crafts policies that are contrary to what the law’s framers intended. We need to restore the “non-delegation” doctrine, or the principle that Congress creates specific laws with specific instructions on how they are to be carried out; it doesn’t create lawmakers. This is an important issue. Let people know about what Obama is doing to our immigration law by sharing this article on Facebook and Twitter.
Posted on: Wed, 23 Jul 2014 21:24:59 +0000
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