Obama's unprecedented amnesty

Finally, in the same 1990 immigration law that codified Bush’s “family fairness” directive, Congress rejected further ad hoc presidential amnesties by creating Temporary Protected Status (TPS). The various unilateral actions presidents had taken to amnesty small groups of illegal aliens over the years — Extended Voluntary Departure and Deferred Enforced Departure were among the Orwellian euphemisms deployed — were clearly seen as abuses of the discretion which Congress granted the president. TPS was intended to limit that discretion in granting legal status, including work permits, to illegal aliens, by limiting such grants to clearly specified circumstances — such as when a country suffered an earthquake or hurricane — and imposing specific procedures upon the executive. And to make certain that future executive actions didn’t simply become a means of naturalizing entire populations of illegal aliens, the TPS law requires any bill addressing naturalization of TPS recipients has to pass the Senate with a 60 percent super-majority.

It is absurd for Obama to claim that the very executive overreach that prompted Congress to impose these limits established a precedent for even greater executive overreach today.

Whatever their merits, the Reagan and Bush measures were modest attempts at faithfully executing legislation duly enacted by Congress. Obama’s planned amnesty decree is Caesarism, pure and simple. “Precedent” isn’t the right word for the Obama crowd’s invocation of Reagan. The right word is “pretext.”