Vote Early, Often, and Illegally

The Obama administration continues it's Democrat Voter Drive (after the colossal flop of the War on Women) by announcing today that it will grant immunity and work permits to young adults who were brought to the United States as children.  According to the story posted this morning on The Hill's website, those eligible for this "deferred action" (as Homeland Security Sec. Janet Napolitano calls it) are illegal aliens under the age of 30 who were brought here before the age of 16 and claim to have been in the United States continuously for the past 15 years.  They also cannot have a criminal record and must apply for a two-year work permit.  This work permit does not have a limit on the number of times that it can be renewed.


At first blush, this strategy serves two purposes.  This first is to assuage Latino lobbyists who have previously raised concerns that the Administration is not doing enough for them.  In the not to distant past, President Obama chided the pro-amensty crowd for blaming him for the failure to pass the DREAM Act.  As of last year, the President said "The fact of the matter is there are laws on the books that I have to enforce.  And I think there's been a great disservice done to the cause of getting the DREAM Act passed and getting comprehensive immigration passed by perpetuating the notion that somehow, by myself, I can go and do these things.  It's just not true."  So, other than the fact that Obama is busying trying to get re-elected with a shrinking economy and high unemployment, what's changed?


The other, perhaps less obvious, purpose is to ensure that these newly legal residents will vote like good little Democrats.  The illegals that can apply for and be issued work permits are practically guaranteed to have been properly indoctrinated in the ways of liberalism.  The youngest in this group will have just graduated from high school.  The oldest in the group will either be in grad school or less than five years out of college.  Couple that with the high probability that these young adults were raised to not assimilate into American culture (but rather maintain a culture separate from and untrusting of American culture), and you have a recipe for the perfect class warfare voter.


Of course, some people will still look at this and say that this doesn't affect voter rolls because legal residents are not necessarily citizens.  Because only citizens legally have the right to vote, these young adults would not be eligible.  One would have to be naive to not account for the recent Department of Justice assaults on state governments seeking to purge their voter rolls of fraudulent registrations or enact voter ID laws.  Just like the seemingly off-the-wall question that Mitt Romney was asked about the states' ability to take away birth control, Attorney General Eric Holder's aggressive opposition to fix the issues of voter fraud and voter identification was a prelude to this latest outrage.


I call this an outrage because it is being done via an executive order and without legislation from Congress.  Congress already tried this once before with the DREAM Act.  The attempt was shot down in flames when people flooded the phone lines and inboxes of their Senators and Representatives to protest it.  Liberals can only get their way by either judicial activism or by fiat.  While illegal immigration is a large and as of yet unresolved issue, there is a much more threatening precedent being set here: can the President use an executive order indiscriminately?


At this nation's founding, the idea of an all-powerful executive was repugnant.  To the mainstream, it still is.  From a constitutional standpoint, the President has the following authority: "The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America...To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof."  The Internet is already abuzz with liberals pointing to Reagan's granting amnesty to illegal aliens as an example of this already being done in the past.  There's one little problem, though.  Reagan granted amnesty because Congress had first passed a law that granted him the authority to do so.  


Because the power to make Federal laws is exclusively reserved for Congress, what law is Obama executing by the issuance of this executive order?  Undoubtedly, the constitutionally of this will be challenged.  In fact, observers on the left and the right already acknowledge that this is unconstitutional.  The question is, will it be too late or will it even matter to this President?  The fact that it is backdoor amnesty is outrageous.  The manner in which it is being done is Orwellian.