Right after Donald Trump nominated Jeff Sessions to be his attorney general back in November, Washington Examiner columnist Byron York wrote an op-ed that’s even more relevant today than it was then, because it aptly explains the strident Democratic opposition to the Alabama senator.
And it has little to do with the current manufactured hysteria on whether or not Sessions is a “racist.”
York writes that since Sessions is currently the Senate’s “highest-profile, most determined, and most knowledgeable opponent of comprehensive immigration reform,” Democrats are naturally afraid of what he could unilaterally do to help reverse President Obama’s actions on immigration without any congressional actions whatsoever.
Which means that, though they are in the minority and couldn’t likely stop the majority, Democrats would be completely powerless to even slow things down or gum up the works in the Senate.
York points out that those laws currently on the books, which deal with almost every immigration issue currently on the table including immigrants who overstay their visa, workplace compliance, criminal aliens, and more, are currently being mostly “ignored by the Obama Administration.”
Since Congress has declined to change the “extensive, and in some cases, strict immigration laws on the books” at Obama’s request, the current president has simply “stopped enforcing provisions of the law that he did not like.”
Thus, the incoming administration will be able to “simply resume enforcement of the law — a move that by itself would bring a huge change to immigration practices in the United States. No congressional approval needed.”
The op-ed provides detail on several key points from a Center for Immigration Studies list of “79 Obama policies the new administration could change without any action by Congress.”
The key for the Sessions pick, and current Democratic opposition to it, is where the attorney general’s office actually comes into play. According to York:
The Justice Department, among other federal agencies, hands out billions of dollars in federal grants. In instructing grant recipients to comply with federal law, the Obama administration ignored 8 USC 1373; in September, the Justice Department inspector general told a House committee that, “we found that the Department had not provided grant recipients with clear guidance as to whether Section 1373 was an applicable federal law with which recipients were expected to comply.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions could change that, and, as a result, many cities would find it harder to defy federal law. “For the diehards who do not respond to incentives or changed policies (like Chicago, San Francisco, Philadelphia, etc.),” writes Vaughan, “he could look at prosecution under 8 USC 1324, which prohibits shielding illegal aliens from detection.”
Democrats just can’t come right out and say they don’t want Sessions because he will enforce the law, so they have to come up with another reason.
Ergo, the manufactured “racism” charge.
Read the column here.
Op-ed views and opinions expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of BizPac Review.
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