National Review Online
Wednesday, June
19, 2024
Introducing his latest “immigration relief” policy at the White House
yesterday, President Biden told the assembled crowd that the changes he was
making had been considered by Congress and had “passed.” Then, correcting
himself, he conceded that this was not true. Rather, he admitted, he was announcing
yet another “executive order.”
That Biden chose the twelfth anniversary of DACA to
promulgate his alterations is fitting. Indeed, all that was missing was a
commemorative sign that read, “Twelve years of ignoring the Constitution.” The
creation of DACA, you may recall, was marked by President Barack Obama’s
astonishing insistence that “if Congress won’t act, I will.” Prior to its
announcement, Obama had explained frequently that he did not have the power to
rewrite immigration law on the fly. “I am not a king,” Obama said often. “I am
not an emperor.” But, with a tough reelection fight looming, he forgot all that
and did it anyway. Civically, this represented a low moment in American
history. That President Biden aspires to celebrate it — let alone to build on
it — is damning in the extreme.
Alas, that, undoubtedly, is his aim. Adopting his
decreasingly persuasive tough-guy pose, Biden told the audience, “Folks, I’m
not interested in playing politics with the border or with immigration.”
Considered from any angle, this was a disgraceful thing to say. For a start,
Joe Biden has, in fact, “played politics” with the border, and he did so again
in this speech when he pretended preposterously that it was “Trump and the
Republicans” — rather than the progressive wing of his coalition — who were standing
in the way of his ability to deal with the problem. Tellingly, Biden has now
tried to have this issue both ways in the space of six months. Earlier this
year, Biden claimed that he could not enforce existing immigration law without
further input from Congress. Last month, he reversed himself and then demanded
credit for doing a small part of the job he was supposed to have been doing all
along.
More broadly, though, “politics” is precisely what
has been missing from this White House’s approach to immigration. Like Barack
Obama before him, President Biden seems to believe that Congress is not the
sole repository of all the federal government’s legislative powers but is
instead an advice bureau that can be consulted when the executive feels like
it. President Biden did not consult Congress when he decided to open up the
border, and he has not consulted Congress now that he has decided to pursue a
mass amnesty. For better or for worse, Congress has already set out the rules
in this area, and, for better or for worse, those rules are binding on the
president. Per Section 212(d)(5) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA),
the parole of otherwise-inadmissible aliens may not be granted on a blanket
basis, but case-by-case — or, in extreme circumstances, on urgent humanitarian
grounds. Being down in the polls clearly does not qualify, and neither does a desperate desire to earn “more support
from Latino voters.” Confirmation of this can be found in Article II.
That Congress has not passed the policies that Biden now
seeks is not an accident but the product of a reasonable mistrust in the
Democratic Party’s willingness to address the crisis at its roots. Were the
border to be secured, the public might well be more open to dealing
sympathetically with the often-difficult question of who to prioritize for
deportation and who to put on a path toward legalization. But the border has
not been secured, and there seems no prospect of the border being secured any
time soon; as a result, there exists a great deal of skepticism toward
rewarding yet another generation of lawbreakers. Just this month, polling
showed that, in nearly every demographic group, majorities of American voters
have come to support mass deportations. That Biden’s response to this
has been to announce the ultra vires amnesty of hundreds of thousands of
illegal immigrants is not solely bad politics; it is an affront to our
constitutional system, to our democracy, and to the claim that nobody is above
the law.
Ultimately, that is all that matters. Shortly after
Biden’s speech, the White House released
a “fact sheet,” in which it recorded upfront that, “since his first day in
office, President Biden has called on Congress to secure our border and address
our broken immigration system.” Notably missing in the subsequent pages was any
explanation of why, having failed to achieve his preferred legislative changes,
Biden believed that he had the right to issue the adjustments himself. No laws
were cited, no court cases were invoked, and no principles of any kind were
outlined. “President Biden,” the document explained, has “announced new
actions.” Yes. But that is no way to run a country.
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