Greg Abbott sued to stop Barack Obama’s administrative amnesty for millions of illegal aliens, back when he was Attorney General. Now he’s Governor, and he is winning, along with the other 25 states that joined Texas in suing: the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the injunction preventing the President from implementing his amnesty.

Fox News says about 5 million would be given amnesty under the President’s plan. Abbott says “President Obama should abandon his lawless executive amnesty program and start enforcing the law today.”

Naturally the administration isn’t going to give up. In fact, the administration is skipping the request for an en banc hearing of the entire Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, and instead is appealing the 3 judge panel’s decision straight to the Supreme Court.

In this instance, it’s the preliminary injunction that’s the real case. If the President were to win, and stop the injunction against him, then he would implement his plan immediately. Once we let people stay, then our ability to uphold the rule of law is damaged.

Under the President’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA), he would unilaterally create broad exceptions to our immigration policy. Note that DACA allegedly would require you to have come here as a child, however it would cover 30 year olds who were here as a baby, left, then came back as an adult. Applicants for DACA are also given ridiculously broad standards of ‘proof’ that they came here as children, including unofficial, easily-forged documents.

DAPA is even more lenient about proof of residency. You only need ‘affidavits.’ Further note that some criminal convictions will not trigger disqualification from DACA and DAPA.

My prediction is that if DACA and DAPA are allowed to be implemented, then we’ll get an groundswell of folks who “came here as children,” more unaccompanied children sent across the border by callous parents, and new birth tourism aimed at qualifying for future expansions of DACA and DAPA.

Note that the two judges who decided against the President were appointed by Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, while the dissenter in the 2-1 decision was a Jimmy Carter appointee. There is a difference between the parties, folks.

Photo by Anthony Albright on Flickr