Good morning. The Judiciary Committee will come to order, and without objection the chair is authorized to declare recesses of the committee at any time. We welcome everyone to this mornings hearing on the unconstitutionality of president obamas executive actions on immigration, and ill begin by recognizing myself for an opening statement. Last november president obama announced one of the biggest constitutional power grabs ever by a president. He declared unilaterally that by his own estimation almost 5 million unlawful aliens would be free from the legal consequences of their lawless actions. Not only that, by granting them deferred action, he would bestow upon them benefits such as legal presence, Work Authorization, and access to the Social Security trust fund and the earned income tax credit. President obama took these actions despite having stated over 20 times in the past that he didnt have the constitutional power to take such steps on his own. As the washington posts own fact
These regulations, by the way were adopted through notice and comment procedures and they do have the force of law. None of these laws not one of them, says or even remotely implies that deferred action is per se illegal. The most vocal critics have misunderstood what deferred action is. Theyve confused deferred action itself with certain things that you can apply for if you get deferred action. But deferred action itself is just one form of prosecutorial discretion. Its a decision not to prioritize a persons removal, at least for the moment and the only thing affirmative about it is that the agency is giving the person a piece of paper letting them know that that is the case. Every immigration scholar and practitioner knows that deferred action can be revoked at any time for any reason and the government can bring removal proceedings at any time contrary to what my new friend professor foley has said. Theres nothing in any law that says this makes a person who is deportable not deport