Speech #1130120202

Even the Washington Postnot known as being a bastion of conservative thoughthas said that failing to get his way in Congress does not "grant the president license to tear up the Constitution." Unfortunately. the President has shown that he has very little patience with constitutional safeguards. especially when they hamper his agenda or complicate his political needs. After all. this is the same President who has unilaterally rewritten ObamaCare by granting extensions. waivers. and the like and who has unilaterally gutted welfare reform and who has made blatantly unconstitutional appointments to the Federal bureaucracy and to the Federal judiciary. only to be corrected by the courts. For that matter. the President has already made a number of unilateral changes in U.S. immigration policy with disastrous results. We have seen literally thousands of convicted criminals released from U.S. custody. including those with violent records. And. of course. it wasnt that long ago that we saw what had been called a genuine humanitarian crisis unfold along the southern border in my State as tens of thousands of Central American children made a treacherous journey in order to cross illegally into the United States and take advantage of a loophole in a 2008 law that we tried to correct but couldnt even get a vote on it in the Senate. At the height of the crisis in early June. the New York Times told the story of a 13yearold Honduran boy who was detained in Mexico while trying to reach the U.S. border. and his story was pretty typical of what we heard from many people. The Department of Homeland Security conducted interviews with many of the immigrants who came across at that time. "Like so many others across Central America." the Times reported. this boy "said his mother believed that the Obama administration had quietly changed its policy regarding unaccompanied minors and that if he made it across. he would have a better shot at staying." In other words. the impression that we are not going to enforce our law is a magnet. I have no idea how this unilateral action by the President will be interpretedgranting legal status presumably to millions of people by the swipe of his pen. Will that be viewed as a green light for people who want to come to the United States from all around the world. saying: Well. if I can just get to the United States. President Obama will let me stay too. About 1 week later the Washington Post confirmed that the influx of unaccompanied Central American children is "being driven in large part by the perception they will be allowed to stay under the Obama administrations immigration policies." I mention these stories because they highlight the alltopredictable consequences of failing to enforce U.S. immigration law. So much of law enforcement is the deterrent valuein other words. stopping people from breaking the law in the first instance. not just catching them after they actually break it. And sending the message "Get here if you can. and you might too be one of the ones who win the lucky immigration lottery and get to stay in the United States" is a huge magnet for illegal immigration and it underminesindeed. it guts the deterrent value of enforcing the law. And for what? The President reportedly. unless he rethinks this misguided strategy. will provide some form of temporary relief that will not even be able to be implemented before he leaves office in 2 years. with uncertainty for these immigrants and their families as to what is going to happen beyond. How he is drawing the line is beyond me. I read that apparently the reports that have been dribbled out in the pressand. of course. this town is famous for intentional leaks to sort of issue trial balloons to see how people are going to react. Well. if the trial balloons are correct. if the stories are correct. the Presidents order will cover roughly 40 percent of the people here in violation of our immigration laws40 percent. So why did he decide to stop at 40 percent and not do 60 percent or 80 percent or 100 percent? What about the people who have been waiting patiently in line. complying with our immigration laws? To have these other millions of people jump ahead of them and be given some form of legal status is not fair to them. and it certainly doesnt encourage peoples compliance with the rules or the law. Then we have to look at who benefits the most. And I am not talking. about the immigrants. I am talking about the criminal organizations. This is part of how they operate and their business model.