Republicans have been trying to cast President Obama's executive order regarding changes to immigration enforcement as being both "executive amnesty" and "unconstitutional." Here's the problem with that stance. It isn't "amnesty". And if if was, it wouldn't be unconstitutional.
Join me below the fold to find out why. Then use this to inform your friends and relatives at Thanksgiving.
First, let’s establish that rightists are indeed calling the President’s executive order "executive amnesty". Both actual politicians and the rightist media are using that term. Here is Brietbart doing it, and quoting Michele Bachmann and others doing it. Here is Townhall.com doing it, unashamedly, and even pretending that’s simply the right term to use. Here is Alberto Gonzales doing it, in a column for USA Today, as if anyone who isn’t completely insane should be listening to the guy who gave George Bush the green light to torture people. Here is Boehner doing it in a prebuttal saying the President is lying about whatever he hadn’t said yet. Here is McConnell doing it while claiming it will kill people (I’m not shitting you, that’s what McConnell says).
There is no justification for categorizing the President’s order as “amnesty” (whether “executive” or not). The definition of “amnesty” is “an official pardon for people who have been convicted of political offenses.” In order for this to be “amnesty”, 1) the President would have had to issue a pardon, 2) the people to whom it was issued would have had to have been convicted, and 3) the crimes they were convicted of would have had to have been political. None of these elements are present.
1) The executive order can be rescinded at any time, by this President or any future president. The order merely delays prosecution.
2) The people who will not be prosecuted have not even been arraigned or charged with any crimes, let alone convicted.
3) The crime they are alleged to have committed is an offence against the immigration statues, not a violation of some political matter. In fact, if some political elements were involved in their presence in the United States, they’d probably be eligible to apply for asylum.
In a semi-final point of irony, here is Time Magazine providing much the same definition of “amnesty” I just did (and saying the definition comes from “the Oxford dictionary”), but claiming it is President Obama – not Republicans – who is guilty of misrepresenting the meaning of “amnesty”. Again, I shit you not. I can’t make this stuff up.
I said that was only a “semi-final” irony. Here’s the kicker. If the President actually did grant “amnesty”, there is absofuckinglutely no question it would be constitutional. Article II Section 2 of the Constitution of the United States describes the powers of the President, and opens with this paragraph:
The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.
Did you see that? Under our Constitution, the President is allowed to issue “
Pardons for Offences against the United States”. Since a violation of US immigration law is an “Offense against the United States”, the President would be empowered to issue pardons to the people who do it.
Republicans have striven mightily to make “amnesty” a four-letter word, in violation against the rules of English. Whether it really is a sin or not, the President is constitutionally empowered to commit it. So the Republican argument here is that the President is executing his constitutionally-granted authority, and we should somehow find a way to prevent him from doing that.
They’re wrong, which is normal for Republicans. But if they were right, then they would still be wrong. That is what’s called a “self-negating argument.”
In their enthusiasm to claim both that the President is doing something in violation of the Constitution, and that anything that doesn't result in millions of deportations of brown people is "amnesty," Republicans have managed to create an argument that is not only wrong, and wrong-headed, but "wrong" in the same way that "microscopic whale" is wrong, or "full-grown acorn" is wrong, or "rational Tea Partiers" is wrong.
"Unconstitutional executive amnesty" is internally self-negating. Do spread the word.