The American public owes the officers who have filed this lawsuit a great debt of gratitude. They alone are confronting an administration that is operating with no constraints on its "discretionary" power to permit virtually unlimited numbers of foreign nationals to live and work in the United States.
There is strong reason to believe that if the executive branch can successfully implement an unlegislated DREAM Act amnesty that, in a second Obama administration, a de facto amnesty would be implemented for virtually all those in the country illegally. The result is to create a huge incentive for future illegal immigration.
Equally as important, the lawsuit puts pressure on the Congressional leadership to reassert the legislative branch's constitutional role in immigration policy. Congress possesses the power to define the limits of executive discretion and require the administration to enforce our immigration laws as written. It has the power to bar the administration from using funds intended to enforce our immigration laws from being used to implement an amnesty for the people who broke our laws. Thus far, Congress has done nothing, and this is deeply troubling.
Left unchecked, the administration's actions will deeply and permanently upset the constitutional framework around which immigration policy is set and decided. In an age of large-scale human mobility, such a scenario cannot be sustained.
Dan Stein is president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform.
Rep. Bill Cassidy has his blood drawn by Alesha Barbour during a free hepatitis screening in the Rayburn House Office Building hosted by the Congressional Viral Hepatitis Caucus to recognize "National Viral Hepatitis Testing Day."
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