Summary: Over a hundred legal experts analyzed President Obama’s actions regarding immigration measures and concluded that they are both constitutional and within President Obama’s power.
According to U-T San Diego, over one hundred immigration professors and scholars stated on Tuesday that President Obama’s recent decision to spare several million illegal immigrants from deportation is both constitutional and within his administrative powers.
A total of 135 legal scholars examined the decision. Two significant provisions of the executive actions, one which would protect parents of citizens or permanent residents from deportation and allow them to apply for work permits, and another which would expand a program that protected immigrants that had entered the country illegally as children, were studied. The two programs have the potential to affect up to 4.4 million people in the United States.
President Obama pledged $9 million for legal services for the children of illegal immigrants.
According to the experts, President Obama’s move is a proper use of prosecutorial discretion. However, expectedly, Republicans were livid after the decision was announced. They called the offer of both deportation relief and work permits unconstitutional and unlawful. Many critics state that the president should enforce the laws passed by Congress, and that President Obama’s actions fly in the face of Congress.
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The Obama administration responded that both Republican and Democratic presidents have protected immigrants from deportation using executive authority in the past. However, a major difference with past presidents’ actions and President Obama’s measures are that President Obama’s will affect a much greater number of immigrants.
Here’s an article about an ACLU lawsuit regarding children of immigrants.
John Yoo and Robert Delahunty, two critics of the measures who worked for the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel during President George W. Bush’s presidency, argue that such prosecutorial discretion must be applied much more narrowly.
However, the 135 scholars stated that just because the actions are broad in scope does not make them unlawful. They said, “The president could conceivably decide to cap the number of people who can receive prosecutorial discretion or make the conditions restrictive enough to keep the numbers small, but this would be a policy choice, not a legal issue.
The statement is an updated version of a letter dated September 3 from many of the same professors and experts to President Obama that delineated legal arguments and precedent for executive action. The group was organized by Stephen H. Legomsky at the Washington University School of Law, Hiroshi Motomura at UCLA School of Law, and Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia at the Pennsylvania State University Dickinson School of Law.
Photo credit: localprogress.org
Here are some who disagree with Motomura, et al.
http://dailysignal.com/2014/02/27/liberal-professor-slams-obamas-use-executive-orders-constitutional-tipping-point-video/
http://www.christianpost.com/news/legal-scholar-says-obamas-executive-orders-are-misuse-of-power-76896/
And here is an interviewer explaining Motumura’s opinion. “In an interview last year, Motomura told me that Obama could conceivably expand that program, but there are limits to how far he can go…That means — and again, this is all just in theory — Obama could extend promises of deferred deportation to some additional groups of illegal immigrants. He could try to extend it to domestic-violence victims, say. Or to undocumented family members of legal immigrants. Or to workers who are bringing civil rights or labor-violation claims. Or to those with disabled children. It’s possible that these moves could cover another couple million undocumented immigrants. But he can’t extend deferral to everyone.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/02/04/immigration-groups-want-obama-to-halt-deportations-heres-how-that-might-work/
Legal scholars (progressive professors) have obviously not read the Constitution. there are 3 branches of government which do not cross over. Congress makes the laws and changes the laws. The emperor executes the laws congress has passed. The executive branch does not have the power to change a law that has been created by congress. Jonathan Turley, a liberal Constitutional scholar, disagrees with the 100. Read his blog