Saturday, September 6, 2014

Has Obama Just Drawn a 'Line in the Sand' on Immigration Reform?

It's a time-honored truism that the pen is mightier than the sword -- but when it comes to US immigration policy, it seems that Democrat Party politics is mightier than either the pen or the sword, especially if it's the pen President Obama has been threatening to use to reform immigration if Congress refuses to do the job for him. Today, Obama put down his "immigration" pen and reversed course, saying he is delaying taking executive action until after the November mid-term congressional elections. Obama is obviously bowing to the fears of his fellow Democrats, who believe that action by Obama on immigration, a very divisive issue in American politics, could cost them control of the Senate, which many analysts are already predicting to be within reach of the GOP. The decision was an about-face for the President, who promised in a high-profile June 30 speech that he would act unilaterally on immigration at the end of summer if Congress did not enact immigration reform legislation. ~~~~~ A White House official who spoke to Newsmax anonymously cited partisan politics as the main reason for the delay : "The reality the President has had to weigh is that we're in the midst of the political season." Two White House officials said Obama concluded that circumventing Congress through executive actions on immigration during the campaign would politicize the issue and hurt future efforts to pass a broad overhaul. They said he fully intends to act before the end of the year. Immigration advocacy groups that have criticized Republicans for not passing an immigration overhaul instantly turned their anger on Obama. United We Dream, said the decision was "another slap to the face of the Latino and immigrant community." Immigration reform activists accused the President of putting politics first. "We are bitterly disappointed in the President and we are bitterly disappointed in the Senate Democrats," said Frank Sharry, executive director of America's Voice. "We advocates didn't make the reform promise; we just made the mistake of believing it. The President and Senate Democrats have chosen politics over people, the status quo over solving real problems." Republican leaders in Congress also criticized the president, calling his decision a cynical ploy. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Obama's move amounted to "Washington politics at its worst. What is so cynical about the President's immigration announcement is that the President isn't saying he'll follow the law, he's just saying he'll go around the law once it's too late for Americans to hold his party accountable in the November elections," McConnell said. "This is clearly not decision-making designed around the best policy." ~~~~~ In a press conference in Wales at the end of the NATO meeting this week, Obama reiterated his determination to ac t on his own, while avoiding making a commitment on timing. He also spelled out ambitious objectives for his executive actions, including increasing border security, upgrading the processing of border crossers and encouraging legal immigration. He also said he would offer immigrants who have been illegally in the United States for some time a way to become legal residents, pay taxes, pay a fine and learn English. Delaying his executive action will put even more pressure on Obama to take the broadest measures he thinks his authority allows, perhaps eliminating deportation for a sizable portion of the 11 million immigrants now illegally in the United States. In Wales, the President said: "I want to be very clear...in the absence of ... action by Congress, I'm going to do what I can do within the legal constraints of my office, because it's the right thing to do for the country," ~~~~~ Dear readers, now that President Obama has passed off to NATO both the Ukraine-Russia crisis and a large chunk of the next round in the ISIS confrontation - if we are to believe his assertion that NATO is ready to take on ISIS - President Obama seems to have turned his attention to domestic US problems. The next step is for the President to draw a line in the sand for immigration reform -- when he does that, we will know that he has definitively decided to do nothing.

11 comments:

  1. I thought you had already figured that out...

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    1. “Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.” – Thomas Jefferson

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  2. When Obama draws a "red line" anyplace it doesn't bode well for the point/action in question. Could we have just seem the immediate Immigration question be laid to rest?

    No were not that fortunate.

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    1. This is of real concern over what Obama does or doesn't do in his sandbox in the Rose Garden

      As the 13th anniversary of 9-11 approaches, the Obama administration and its friends in the mainstream media have been eerily quiet about the 11 commercial airliners reported stolen by Islamic terrorists from a Libyan airport a little over a week ago. It should have been front page news on every newspaper across the country, with preparations made to keep people out of the downtowns of the largest cities on September 11 in case the terrorists try another attack with suicide planes. Instead, this administration is more interested in saving face than protecting innocent Americans, downplaying the threat.

      Incredulously, despite photos that have been posted online by terrorists posing next to the stolen planes, published by reputable news sources such as the British newspaper Mail Online, the Obama administration is still claiming it has no information confirming the hijacking of the planes. Obama’s State Department told The Blaze on Friday, “The national threat level has not been raised.” Some of these planes are long-range jumbo jets capable of reaching U.S. cities. None of them have been located since their disappearance.

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  3. In his address from the press Room at the White House on June 30, 2014 Obama made the statement … “Pass a bill; solve a problem”. What he really meant was pass my bill – not a bill that represents both republican’s ideas on immigration and democratic, or even just Obama’s ideas. But a workable bill.= that would go a long way to correcting the problem.

    Not as Obama wants a bill that would grant quick legal status to more than 11 million ILLEGAL ALIENS. This whole issue this year has been made into the face of those forlorn children that crossed our borders illegally at the behest of their parents; so that once the “kidlings” were here legally the parents could hop on the bus and become a reunited family. A family the parents were willing to risk the welfare and lives of the kids for their own benefit.

    My Grandfather came to this country and entered Ellis Island not in the back of a truck hidden like a thief, but standing tall and proud as he walked to his new life. Was he all that different? – sure he was. He was honorable, proud to be here, had his shots for diseases, and my gosh spoke English fluently. That is the thumb nail sketch of the immigrants that made this country stronger and better – long ago, last year, and tomorrow.

    What Obama wants are beholding pawns that will register Democratic and vote for self-serving politicians like Obama?

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    1. If all Obama wants is an UP or DOWN vote on his bill from the House? Well then John Boehner should give it to him an election day at about 7:30 PM PST so as not to allow election influence or voter fraud

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  4. If the final Immigration Reform Act that Obama wants includes any form of outright amnesty then what stops every other felon that in incarcerated in any level of our penal system short of a murder conviction for appealing for “Amnesty, a pardon, a reprieve, exoneration” for their crimes bad on some mambo jumbo logic that the perpetrator was only trying to better themselves and their family by robbing a Chase bank for $5 million dollars?

    The Illegal Immigrants should be tried and convicted of breaking a federal/state law of illegal entry, trespass, falsifying documents, etc., etc. So to grant them Amnesty is not really to allow them to stay – it should be to not convict them of their crimes against the United States, but rather their amnesty is to leave the country without doing jail time.

    There is NO county on this planet that would purpose such idiocy for some 11 Million people. Within the borders of any other country you’d be sent quickly back to your country of origin and/or jail time (in facilities much less attractive than the US prisons.

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  5. With Obama move to postpone using his much talked about "PEN"he shows that his real agenda is not the Transperent Washington DC and national politics but Chicago style politics which is about as transparent as his truthfulness .

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  6. There is no question that these are challenging and dangerous times for the United States of America. The progressive movement, which rejects virtually all of the principles that animated our Founders, aspires to recreate America as a Euro-style social welfare state. It seeks to refashion our nation into one that values equality over liberty, that favors socialism over capitalism, that places appeasement, disarmament and multilateralism above a robust national defense, that shuns the traditional Judeo-Christian ethic of our forefathers in favor of a squishy multiculturalism and that thinks the only thing exceptional about the US is that it is marked indelibly by racism, sexism and homophobia. It has taken them a hundred years to achieve, but their view now seems to command the allegiance of a majority of Americans. If American conservatives cannot reverse this horrific pattern, then the USA as we know (or knew) it is doomed

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  7. The recent increase in security at a key Army base(Ft. Bliss) near a Mexican border city where Islamic terrorists are confirmed to be operating and planning an attack on the United States indicates that the facility is a target. As we all know, Ft. Hood was already attacked by a radical Army psychiatrist (Nidal Malik Hasan) who murdered 13 colleagues and wounded dozens of others as he chanted “Allahu Akbar!” (God is great in Arabic). Hasan had ties to a radical mosque leader (Anwar al Awlaki) who promoted jihad against the U.S., attempted to contact Al Qaeda associates prior to the attack and defended Islamic suicide bombers in comments he posted on the internet.

    Given how easy it is to cross the border terrorist can easily cross it. We’ve known for some time that terrorist elements have entered the U.S. through Mexico. This is nothing new. Actually, Islamic terrorists are likely planning multiple attacks in the border region, including perhaps malls and power grids, according to Maj. Gen. Vallely, who assures that the cells are quite sophisticated. “They are well organized and well-funded,” he said.

    They are America among us thanks to the inactivity of the Obama administration and Obama himself to use his “pen” for some good.

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  8. "It has refinements, technological advances, and a sophisticated approach to the destruction of human freedom. But, like every one of the super states that preceded it, there is that one iron rule that it must maintain and retain to survive - logic is an enemy and truth is a menace." These words were spoken by Rod Serling in a Twilight Zone episode from June 2nd, 1961 titled The Obsolete Man.

    Logic and truth, freedom of expression and citizens' rights, as enshrined in the magnificent Constitution and Bill of Rights, are now deemed treacherous and obsolete by the vast and growing power of Big Government under the baleful and imperial presidency of Barack Hussein Obama whose army of unelected “changers of the Constitution” eagerly do his bidding without question. It would seem that under the soft tyranny of the Obama Administration, the three basic rights enshrined in the Declaration of Independence - Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness - are all but expunged.

    Obama's foreign policy and his ineffective “Red Lines” that now outline the Middle East and Eastern Europe, as with his domestic strategy, is to bring America down to a powerless and impotent level. He is succeeding to his own delight but to the ruination of the United States of America. His gleeful policy of allying himself with America's natural enemies, at the expense of the few remaining loyal allies the U.S. still has, is at full tilt.

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