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By Paul Bremmer
If President Obama goes ahead with his plan to unilaterally implement immigration reform, it will violate one of the foundations of the U.S. Constitution, according to an immigration-policy expert.
"In effect, he is making law, which is a fundamental violation of the separation of powers. He's supposed to enforce the law; Congress is supposed to make the law," said Steven Camarota. "He is, by design, creating a constitutional crisis."
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Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, believes the constitutional conflict is the most troublesome aspect of Obama's planned executive amnesty. However, a unilateral amnesty would damage the United States in other ways as well, he said.
Take, for example, the plight of America's less-educated, low-skilled population. The labor market is unkind to them as it is. According to Camarota, only about half of all young people with a high-school diploma or less have a job. And for those who do, their real wages have been declining for decades.
Now the president is planning to grant work permits to millions of illegal aliens, many of whom are unskilled.
"So it would be very good if we could enforce the law and send some fraction of illegal immigrants home, because that's who they compete with – the least educated Americans," Camarota said.
Some people may say Obama's amnesty will not make much difference, because many illegal aliens are already working in low-skilled jobs. Plenty of employers, especially in agriculture, hire laborers without inquiring about their legal status.
But that's not the case in all low-skilled professions, according to Camarota. He pointed to the low-level security guard profession, which is a low-paying job for low-skilled workers.
"That's a job where they generally vet the applicant, so that illegal immigrants right now can't take them," Camarota said. "Once Obama moves ahead with his amnesty and work permits, now all those people, hundreds of thousands of security guards in the United States, will face direct competition with illegal immigrants."
Some believe the move would add to the offenses that could be cited in an impeachment trial against Obama. New York Times bestselling authors Aaron Klein and Brenda J. Elliott wrote "Impeachable Offenses" to make the case. The authors show how Obama fundamentally has abused the powers of his presidency and has done serious, sustained and impeachable injury to the nations.
Camarota said the president's new executive amnesty will also likely wreak fiscal havoc. Because so many of the newly authorized immigrants will be poor, they will qualify for a whole host of welfare benefits. Camarota singled out the earned income tax credit as perhaps the biggest additional expense to American taxpayers. He estimated that half of the amnestied immigrants will qualify for the EITC.
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"Technically, illegal aliens aren't able to get it, though some still do," he said. "But now that they'll have Social Security numbers, they'll be able, given their low income, reflecting their generally lower education levels, will be able to apply for that benefit, and that's going to cost taxpayers millions of dollars."
The president’s plan may imperil public safety as well. Camarota said Obama is planning to gut Secure Communities, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement program that identifies convicted criminals who are in the U.S. illegally and initiates deportation proceedings against them. Only extremist immigration advocates object to the program, according to Camarota.
"It's just common sense," he said. "Anyone who objects to that program simply doesn't believe in the rule of law, doesn't believe in our borders."
Camarota said immigration activists don't like Secure Communities because some illegal aliens who get caught up in the program haven't committed terribly serious crimes.
"From the point of view of immigration activists, if you're drunken driving, or if you bounce checks and have identity theft, you shouldn't have to go back to your home country," he said. "Of course, if you haven't done those things, then you should never go back, because our laws don't matter to them."
And yet, Obama is planning to scale back the number of criminal alien deportations, according to the research director.
Finally, Camarota said an executive amnesty is likely to encourage even more illegal aliens to come to the U.S. He blamed Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, Obama's 2012 executive memorandum that deferred deportations for illegal immigrants brought to the U.S. as children, for causing this year's massive surge in unaccompanied minors from Central America. He thinks another executive amnesty would lead to yet another border surge.
"This new amnesty is likely, over time, to stimulate even more illegal immigration as new people come and hope that they will qualify either for this amnesty or the next one, because we've already shown with this kind of amnesty that we're not very serious about enforcing our laws," Camarota said. "Why not come to America illegally if that's something you want to do?"
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