The Senate minority whip asserted on the floor yesterday that an executive order from President Obama on immigration would embolden criminal organizations south of the border.
“The president has already made a number of unilateral changes in U.S. immigration policy with disastrous results,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said. “We have seen literally thousands of convicted criminals released from U.S. custody, including those with violent records, and, of course, it wasn’t that long ago we saw what had been called a genuine humanitarian crisis unfold along the southern border in my state.”
“And what about the people who have been waiting patiently in line complying with our immigration laws to have these millions of other people jump right ahead of them and be given some form of legal status? It’s just not fair to them, and it certainly doesn’t encourage people’s compliance with the rules or the law.”
Cornyn added that “criminal organizations would be one of the biggest beneficiaries of the president’s executive order, which would make it even harder for our friends in Mexico to reduce violence and uphold the rule of law.”
“And yet again, President Obama just doesn’t seem to care. He also doesn’t seem to care that his executive action would harm our opportunity to reform our broken legal immigration system. Republicans and Democrats alike have ideas for how to reform our immigration system, and many of them have bipartisan support,” the senator continued.
“So in the president’s desperate attempt to placate some very vocal activist groups and to make up for years of hollow promises, he’s decided to flout the rule of law and end up making real immigration reform that much harder to pass.”
Obama is expected to issue an immigration executive order as soon as this week.
“The record will show that I have actually taken fewer executive actions than my predecessors. Nobody disputes that. What I think has changed is the reaction of some of my friends in Congress to exercising what are normal and, frankly, fairly typical exercises of presidential authority,” Obama told reporters Sunday in Brisbane, adding he “showed extraordinary patience with Congress in trying to work a bipartisan deal.”
“As I’ve said before, I can’t wait in perpetuity when I have authorities that, at least for the next two years, can improve the system, can allow us to shift more resources to the border rather than separating families; improve the legal immigration system,” the president said. “I would be derelict in my duties if I did not try to improve the system that everybody acknowledges is broken.”
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