(POLITICO) For the past week, Sen. Harry Reid has worked hard to prevent a vote on President Obama’s illegal executive amnesty. Finally, after considerable turmoil this weekend, we were able to force a vote.
Only one month ago President Obama announced amnesty for roughly five million people here illegally. He did so in defiance of the manifest will of the voters; as he rightly noted, his “policies were on the ballot all across the country.” And the people voted overwhelmingly against amnesty.
Amnesty is wrong, and it is unfair. It’s unfair to millions of legal immigrants, to the 92 million Americans who are currently not in the labor force, and to minority communities across the nation struggling with record unemployment.
Even more troubling was how the amnesty was decreed: by executive fiat, directly contrary to federal immigration law and to the Constitution. The former prohibits issuing work authorizations to those here illegally, and the latter prohibits the president from ignoring federal laws passed by Congress.