President Barack Obama has done a complete 180 on the legality of executive action on immigration, ignoring his own declarations that shielding illegal immigrants from deportation would be outside his authority — and irresponsible.
The Washington Post called the president out on his reversal in an editorial posted online Monday night under the headline: "In Mr. Obama’s own words, acting alone is 'not how our democracy functions'."
Obama stated that broad executive action on immigration was at odds with the law as recently as September 2013, when he had a sit-down with Telemundo interviewer Jose Diaz-Balart.
In that interview, the president defended his 2012 executive action protecting so-called Dreamers – people brought to the United States illegally as children. But he insisted he couldn't do the same for other immigrants.
"If we start broadening that, then essentially, I’ll be ignoring the law in a way that I think would be very difficult to defend legally,"
Obama told Diaz-Balart.
"So that’s not an option."
And the previous January, in an interview with
Univision anchor Maria Elena Salinas, Obama insisted he couldn't stop deportations because, "I'm not a king."
The following month, while at Google offices, Obama again spoke again about his hands being tied in keeping immigrant families intact by shielding them from deportation,
The New York Times reports.
"This is something that I have struggled with throughout my presidency," Obama said at the February 2013 talk. "The problem is, is that I’m the president of the United States, I’m not the emperor of the United States. My job is to execute laws that are passed."
And in an immigration speech in San Francisco last November, when protesters interrupted Obama with shouts of "Stop deportations," the president insisted only Congress could do that.
"The easy way out is to try to yell and pretend like I can do something by violating our laws," he said at the time, the Times notes. "And what I’m proposing is the harder path."
Two years prior to that, at a March 2011 Town Hall meeting, Obama talked about the legal constraints of executive action on immigration reform, the Times notes.
"There are enough laws on the books by Congress that are very clear in terms of how we have to enforce our immigration system that for me to simply, through executive order, ignore those congressional mandates would not conform with my appropriate role as president," he asserted, the Times reports.
Now, Obama believes those very same actions can be "legally unassailable," the Times notes, quoting a White House official's description of the expected move to shield up 5 million people from deportation.
Obama, meanwhile, insists nothing's changed.
"Getting a comprehensive deal of the sort that is in the Senate legislation, for example, does extend beyond my legal authorities," he asserted Sunday at the conclusion of the
G-20 summit in Brisbane, Australia.
"There are certain things I cannot do."
Yet, he added: "I can’t wait in perpetuity when I have authorities that, at least for the next two years, can improve the system, can allow us to shift more resources to the border rather than separating families; improve the legal immigration system."
"I would be derelict in my duties if I did not try to improve the system that everybody acknowledges is broken."
The double-talk has not gone unnoticed, the Times notes.
In an email to reporters, the Republican National Committee on Monday asked, “When did we add a 'politically convenient clause' to the Constitution in the last four years?" the Times reports.
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