All Hail the Chief Ignorer of the Law

All Hail the Chief Ignorer of the Law (Especially Illegal Immigrants)
by Rep. Ted Poe 10/21/2011

The President of the United States, chief enforcer of the law, has decided not to enforce, but instead to ignore our nation’s immigration laws. Current federal law requires that people who come to the United States illegally be deported. As most of us learned in the seventh grade, the Constitution mandates that the President executes the law of the land.

When he took office, Obama swore to uphold the Constitution, but once again, he seems to be at odds with it. Under the guise of compassion, his administration has issued a decree with 19 categories of illegals to be taken out of the deportation pipeline and given a free pass to live in the United States. This is nothing more than political pandering by the campaigner-in-chief, who is behaving more like an anointed king than the President of the United States. The President has no right or authority to pick and choose what laws he wants to enforce. His attempt to unilaterally loosen immigration enforcement is jeopardizing the sovereignty and security of an already unsecure border.

There are roughly 300,000 illegal immigrants facing deportation from the United States. The administration wants to pick and choose who is first to go, and who gets to stay. If it had its way, only dangerous criminals would be deported, and many of the other illegals who have already committed a crime by entering this country illegally would get a free pass to stay in the United States. This includes those who have not contributed to our system, but who have reaped all of the benefits, courtesy of the American taxpayer.

The President is sending a clear message to anyone who wants to enter the United States illegally: Come on over; our back door is wide open. The law does not apply to you—just don’t kill anyone. This policy of selective enforcement emboldens those who want to come into this country illegally and the 11 million people who are already here. If the federal government does not take our own laws seriously enough to enforce them, why should we expect illegals to follow them?

This looks a lot like backdoor amnesty to any normal citizen. It also resembles the not-so-dreamy DREAM (Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors) Act that Congress has already considered and rejected once before. Congress has over and over defeated attempts to “reform” immigration by granting amnesty to illegal immigrants. Why? Because people should only be able to live in this country if they play by our rules. We do have a front door. And many great people have come through it and made this country a better place. People who come here legally and pay taxes should all have the right to pursue the American dream, but those who defy the law of the land by sneaking in the back door do not automatically deserve the right to stay here just because they haven’t hurt anyone.

The blissful ignorance of the easy access to America at our southern border is costing us more than just our security. The escalating cost of an unsecured border is a fact that we simply cannot afford to ignore anymore. We cannot continue to allow the economic drain that illegal entry imposes on every aspect of our society. Hospitals have become burdened with the heavy cost of accommodating illegals to the point where important services are interrupted for Americans. When I was in Arizona recently, I learned that in Cochise County, on the border, a woman has to drive as far as 90 miles to reach a hospital with a maternity ward that will deliver her baby, because many hospitals have shut down their maternity wards due to the high cost of illegals giving birth. Twenty-seven per cent of the inmates in U.S. prisons are not U.S. citizens, but the prisons are funded by U.S. taxpayers. Schools are overcrowded and burdened with the extra cost—to the tune of $52 billion a year—of educating the children of illegals. Between the overcrowded classrooms and the extra supplies and attention required to accommodate more students, there is no way that the education of American children does not suffer.

In the month of September, for the first time since World War II, the economy had net zero jobs created for a month. The unemployment rate is at 9.1%. People want to see jobs going to taxpaying Americans, not people living here illegally. Something must be done to reform immigration, but the American people have rejected amnesty in every form that it has been presented. We cannot treat those here illegally better than our legal citizens.

This administration has a habit of not enforcing the laws that it doesn’t like. The chief enforcer of the law is now the Chief ignorer of the law. And what it comes down to is that the chief ignorer—also known as the campaigner-in-chief—is so nervous about the Hispanic vote in his reelection that he is willing to bypass Congress and the Constitution to appease his political base. This pandering is disingenuous and disgusting. Through the flawed policy of selective enforcement, the administration is ignoring its constitutional duty, undermining Congress and the will of the people, and endorsing backdoor amnesty.

President Obama was not anointed as king above the law. His constitutional duty is to execute the law. And the law says that those who come to this country must do so legally, through the front door. And people who comer here illegally,are disrespecting our law, our country and our citizens. American citizenship is an earned privilege, not a universal right that includes illegals who enter, even if with the blessing of the chief ignorer of the law.

Meanwhile, the administration has chosen instead to use resources to vigorously prosecute an American guitar makers for allegedly bringing in illegal wood from Madagascar. God forbid we let illegal wood into the U.S.

And that’s just the way it is.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Congressman Ted Poe represents the 2nd Congressional District of Texas. Rep. Poe recently introduced the National Guard Border Enforcement Act that will authorize the Secretary of Defense to make 10,000 armed National Guard troops available upon request from a U.S. Governor. Rep. Poe serves on the House Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Border Security; Executive Member of the Immigration Reform Caucus; and recognized nationally as a leading advocate for border security. Prior to serving in Congress, Poe was a prosecutor and judge in Houston, Texas for 30 years.
_______________________________________________

To read another article on this subject, click here.