Congress

GOP Governors Discuss Next Move on Immigration Fight

As President Barack Obama made final preparations to his announcement on deferred action on immigration, GOP governors were in Boca Raton registering in vivid language their protest.

The GOP governors were in Boca for a Republican Governor’s Association meeting. The governors, many of which are looking at running for president in 2016, wasted no time in issuing strong condemnations of President Obama.

“The president is violating the U.S. Constitution,” said Texas Governor-elect Greg Abbott, who is considering suing the president over the planned executive action.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said Obama had the opportunity to do something with Congress when he was first elected, but squandered that opportunity.

“He had enormous majorities in Congress and campaigned in 2008 to the Hispanic community all across this country that he was going to deal with this issue and he refused to deal with it and instead decided that he wanted to do Obamacare.

The U.S. Senate passed a bipartisan, comprehensive immigration reform bill last year dealing with many of the issues both sides champion. However, the House of Representatives never allowed the bill to come to a vote, even though whip counts from both sides of the political aisle predicted it would have passed.

With no bipartisan Congressional action coming, Obama is expected to issue executive orders Thursday night that will protect up to 5 million more undocumented immigrants from deportation. The executive actions will benefit multiple groups and expand visas for high-skilled workers, while also reorienting resources to help secure the border.

The Justice Department released a memo for the Secretary of Homeland Security and the Counsel to the President which said that all of the expected Presidential actions Thursday are permissible under the current laws.

Former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey also said Thursday that despite the calls by some governor’s to sue the president over the executive action, the lawsuits would likely not succeed.

“I don’t think any lawsuit to stop what the president seems inclined to propose would be successful,” Mukasey told Fox News. “There is something called the political question doctrine, that basically courts apply when they want to stay out of a controversy between the other two branches of government, and they would apply it here.”

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