Guardian: Emperor Obama can order amnesty

A columnist in The Guardian, Britain's hard left paper of record, says that "we" -- meaning, presumably, him and Emperor Obama -- can't wait for amnesty to be passed by the people's unrepresentatives. Making border jumpers legal American residents should be engineered by a nod from His Worship.

No doubt encouraged by the British Labour government's 12-year successful campaign of population replacement in the U.K., Stewart J. Lawrence sees no reason why mere public opinion should stand in the way. These bloody Yanks and their ancient piece of bumf they call "the Constitution," really, they are the limit.

With Republicans still hostile to comprehensive immigration reform, Democrats prefer to punt on immigration until after the mid-terms. But with the GOP surging fast, that's likely to delay further progress until after the 2012 elections – and perhaps even longer.

America, already convulsed by nativism on a scale not seen since the 1920s, can't afford to wait that long. And neither can the president's restive Latino base. We need to act now.

As the nation's chief executive, Obama has the power to institute policy action on immigration that does not require a formal vote by congress. It's not a power he should use lightly, but it's there, and current circumstances warrant its use.

"Current circumstances." May we translate that as, "Even owning both houses of Congress, the Emperor of the Teleprompter can't persuade his party members, who have to answer to the folks back in the swamplands, to vote themselves a new population."

There are two areas of executive action on immigration that the president should consider.

First, in deference to those seeking a legalisation program, Obama should issue an executive order to temporarily suspend the deportation of certain classes of illegal aliens. "Deferred enforced departure", or DED, as it's known, wouldn't give aliens green cards, but it would protect them from deportation for a set period. It could also serve as a prelude to full-scale legalisation, if congress so chooses.

Amnesty until ... Congress so chooses. Congress can't choose against amnesty, but if His Worship "suspends" deportation for a "set" period -- until the suspension is renewed -- we can have a pre-amnesty amnesty.

Two obvious candidates for DED are the children of illegal aliens who migrated when they were still minors, and the illegal alien spouses of US soldiers in uniform. Their numbers are less than 9% of the total illegal alien population. Many in both groups have lived in the US for years.

Yes, many of them have lived illegally in the U.S. for years, because spineless politicians working both sides of the street (for corporations and for immigrant wrongs groups) have looked the other way. Possession, or location, is nine-tenths of the law?

Presidents in both parties – Ronald Reagan, no less than Bill Clinton – have previously extended DED or "temporary protected" status to large classes of illegal aliens, including Central American and Liberian asylum-seekers. Arguably, these quasi-refugees faced danger back home, had they been deported. But everyone knows this was largely a fiction in the Central American case. It simply made sense, politically, to grant them a temporary stay.

That last sentence is at least honest, maybe the only honest one in the whole piece.

At a time when the public discourse on immigration is degenerating into near-hysteria, and congress remains paralysed, even-handed executive action can point the country forward. It sends a powerful signal to voters that the president still has the courage to stick his neck out, even when a nervous and recalcitrant congress, including members of his own party, won't.

One example of discourse on immigration degenerating into near-hysteria leaps to mind. Only this left-wing fascist and those like him (although they may be the majority of the power structure in the U.K.) can imagine that an imperial order from the most loathed president in American history will "point the country forward." Still, that's what you have to do, when a "nervous and recalcitrant congress" (no capital C for these creatures), through some vestigial fear of the people who sent them to Washington, refuses to rubber stamp the wishes of the Emperor Obama, who is forced to breathe the same air as people who cling to their guns and their God.

The entire country – Democrats, Republicans and independents alike – would stand up and cheer.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ... Oh, sorry, Stewart old boy. I forgot you were still there.