Obama’s Executive Immigration Action: Why I Oppose It

Elizabeth Barrett Browning once penned the poetic words: “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.” I find myself asking something similar about Obama’s executive immigration action: “How do I oppose thee? Sheesh, this could take a while!”

Perhaps an entire book would be a more fitting venue for expressing why Obama’s executive immigration action is bad for immigrants, bad for America, opposed to Scripture — but good for his own interests. So I’ll start tackling it in bits and pieces.

Here on the Evangelical Channel at Patheos, we’ve heard from Brandan Robertson who supported the action and Gene Veith who opposed. What struck me most about Roberton’s response was his claim to understand the President’s “loss of patience” in the matter:

While I understand that this situation is politically complex, I cannot help but sympathize with the President’s frustration and loss of patience. When it comes to defending the cause of the oppressed and immigrant, we no longer have time to sit around and debate.  We no longer have time to “build consensus.” Thousands of immigrants to the United States are being deported every year, tearing apart families and destroying the hopes and dreams of those who have long waited the chance to make it to this great nation. Millions more live in fear of deportation every day, worrying that the lives they are working so hard to establish could be destroyed at any moment. [emphasis mine]

With apologies to Brandan, that makes no sense to me. Suddenly, we no longer have time? A situation twenty-five years in the making has suddenly become so urgent that bending or breaking the Constitution is justified? Waiting even two months to work with the newly elected Republican majority is impossible? What made it so urgent? Ebola risks? Terrorist threats? Or election results?

The Truth about Obama’s Leadership

The simple truth is this: President Obama and his party have failed to lead on immigration reform. It’s not that they haven’t made a lot of noise and raised a lot of money off the issue. But they have done nothing to solve the problem within the boundaries of the authority granted to them by the US Constitution.

All they have done is blame someone else—namely the Republicans. This President has chosen to take a position that has served him well politically, that of the victim. And now, in the moment when his voice has become most insignificant to the American cultural dialogue, at the moment when his own legacy hangs most perilously in the balance, and at the moment when Congress is poised to actually be able to do something about the problem, he acts, citing inactivity by others as his rationale. I’m not buying it. Neither, I think, are the American people. They’re not as stupid as Obamacare architect Gruber claims them to be.

What It’s Really All About

Obama’s executive immigration action is really about three things:

1. Maintaining Obama’s base by appearing to keep promises he made to them (not actually keeping them, mind you, just looking like he did). True, his action also positions the Democratic Party to look good to certain segments of the Latino population, but, fundamentally, Obama doesn’t seem to care much for the welfare of his party. One need only look at the unprecedented decline of the Democrat party during his tenure for proof of his lack of concern for the party’s well-being.
2. Shaping his own legacy as the courageous community organizer who stands against the odds and for all who embrace the label of “victim.”  Al Sharpton, Bill Clinton, and Jesse Jackson aren’t getting any younger. And I’m not expecting Obama to go away quietly as Bush 43 did.  I fear that the next two years will be all about image and perception for him as he becomes less and less relevant to the political process.
3. Poking Republicans in the eye. The Republicans have the upper-hand politically thanks to the American voters. All Obama can do is try to distract them from their agenda, to irritate them into making unforced errors—something they are quite good at. Obama knows it and intends to fully exploit that weakness and divide them as much as possible. In a purely Machiavellian kind of way, I respect the genius of his attempt to define the terms of the discussion as the most politically irrelevant person in the room.

Obama’s executive action is not about helping families of people who have entered the country illegally. If he had wanted to do that, he could have initiated legislative action with his Democratic friends when he controlled both houses of Congress or in the Senate at any time in the last four years, the kind of bills bills that actually had a prayer of being passed. Saying the House has done nothing is a misdirection. What would have been the point of passing an immigration reform bill that the Senate would not even consider and he would veto due to its focus on border security first?

How to Get Real Immigration Reform

If he had truly wanted real immigration reform, he could have secured our borders in a real way to stop the continued flow of people illegally entering our country. He did not. Actions speak louder than executive decrees.

If you secure the borders, you will have overwhelmingly bi-partisan support for a path to citizenship for all but the most violent offenders. Poll after poll supports widespread support for resolving this situation if and only if the border is secured first to stop this situation from happening again. Those old enough to remember or read a little political history know that we did this in 1986 with a promise to secure the border. Fool me once, shame on you. But twice? I don’t think so.

Obama’s refusal to secure our border betrays too much of his agenda to foster a new victim sub-culture dependent on Washington government.  It’s an action that is anything but biblical, a point I intend to develop in future posts. His action is about expanding his power base, not empowering hard-working people who live in the shadows to succeed.

Christians should be outraged and screaming for justice, not because “evil Republicans” think little stuff like the rule of law in society should be respected (a foundational issue in God’s revelation in Scripture). No, Christians should be outraged because President Obama has trampled justice to advance his personal agenda at the expense of millions of people, people God loves and cares about deeply. He has condemned them to three years of immigrant status limbo, manufacturing a crisis he can use for political purposes in the process, while kicking the resolution of his crisis into the next President’s tenure. Meanwhile he emerges a hero of his base, a courageous champion for the oppressed. That image should play nicely for securing six-figure speaking engagements and seven-figure book deals while traveling the world as a post-presidential community organizer.

President Obama failed to lead and now he’s throwing the political equivalent of a Hail-Mary pass to try to save his own legacy.

I get it. But what puzzles me is why any Christian would applaud it.

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