WALL STREET JOURNAL Attacks Administrative Amnesty! (Not Really)

James Fulford

07/09/2013

I was surprised to see, in the middle of a Wall Street Journal piece on Obamacare and Obama’s decision not to enforce the employer mandate, an attack on Obama’s illegal and unconstitutional Administrative Amnesty.

It is, after all, the same kind of thing, but the WSJ approves of the Administrative Amnesty. The article says

This is not the first time Mr. Obama has suspended the operation of statutes by executive decree, but it is the most barefaced. In June of last year, for example, the administration stopped initiating

deportation proceedings against some 800,000 illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. before age 16, lived here at least five years, and met a variety of other criteria. This was after Congress refused to enact the Dream Act, which would have allowed these individuals to stay in accordance with these conditions. Earlier in 2012, the president effectively replaced congressional requirements governing state compliance under the No Child Left Behind Act with new ones crafted by his administration.

The president defended his suspension of the immigration laws as an exercise of prosecutorial discretion. He defended his amending of No Child Left Behind as an exercise of authority in the statute to waive certain requirements. The administration has yet to offer a legal justification for last week’s suspension of the employer mandate.