Immigration Executive Order On The Horizon

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**Grey Templar**

agnosto wrote:
Dreadclaw69 wrote:
whembly wrote:
Maybe you should ask for a refund from the government for all that time/money you your efforts.

Seriously though, like Kan said earlier, just hammer those employers who knowingly hire illegals.

Disrupt the incentive.

Easily done too. Expand e-verify. FInes and jail time for those knowingly hiring illegal immigrants

Thanks, I couldn't remember the system that was put in place to stem the hiring of illegal immigrants.

The issue still stands that e-verify doesn't do spit to stop someone from hiring off-the-books labor. Your books say you have 20 employees but you're actually paying 40 or more; not even the IRS will catch that.

Well that money they're being paid with has to be on the books somewhere, unless you are also understating your revenue. Which is also illegal by the way.

**LordofHats**

I paid $25 for a hammer. It's a really nice hammer.

**d-usa**

All my lumber is $1 more expensive today, it's really nice lumber.

**Grey Templar**

Did you miss where doing that is already illegal?

And easily caught by asking for actual receipts.

**Relapse**

A little commentary on the speech:

http://m.thepoliticalinsider.com/thepoliticalinsider/#!/entry/good-lord-obama-says-illegal-immigrants-pick-our-fruit-and,546f61b0025312186c6ed326/4

**LordofHats**

Grey Templar wrote:
Did you miss where doing that is already illegal?

And easily caught by asking for actual receipts.

The IRS doesn't have the time or manpower to check every receipt (unless as I point out in every thread, you want a police state). Cooking the books is easy and IRS just doesn't have the resources to test them all unless they get pointed to look somewhere.

That and I can always say "Cash transaction. Receipt? I think I threw it away. It's a hammer why would I keep the receipt Mr. IRS man?"

**d-usa**

It's so totes illegal and hard to do that hardly anybody is doing that kind of thing...

**Tannhauser42**

And even then, you don't say it's $25 for one hammer. You say it was for five hammers, but only buy the one and claim the other four got lost.

**LordofHats**

No they weren't lost. They were stolen. By my employee. That's why he's not here anymore

**d-usa**

They took our jobs AND our hammers!

**LordofHats**

Those bastards!

**Dreadclaw69**

Two decent articles on the Executive Order

http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/20/opinion/gergen-obamas-dangerous-move/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

Editor's note: David Gergen is a senior political analyst for CNN and has been an adviser to four presidents. A graduate of Harvard Law School, he is a professor of public service and director of the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. Follow him on Twitter: @david_gergen. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his.

(CNN) -- There is something deeply troubling about President Obama's decision to grant legal safe haven to unauthorized immigrants by executive order.
It isn't the underlying policy that is troubling. Just the opposite. We have known for years that we would never deport some 11 million people from our midst. Many have become hard-working, productive members of our society, and Congress, working with the White House, should long ago have provided them a safe pathway out of the shadows.

In that sense, this policy is good. One wonders indeed why the President, having decided to take the plunge, didn't go further and build a pathway to fuller benefits such as health care for those who establish a solid record of work and good behavior.

Nor is it even the questionable legality that disturbs. On many occasions during our history, presidents have tested the boundaries of their constitutional power through executive orders: Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus, his Emancipation Proclamation, Franklin D. Roosevelt's creation of the Works Progress Administration, FDR's awful internment of Japanese-Americans, and Harry Truman's integration of the armed forces were all accomplished through controversial executive orders.

During the 19th century, conventional wisdom held that presidents had only as much authority as the constitution explicitly granted; Teddy Roosevelt famously flipped that proposition on its head -- unless the Constitution explicitly forbids, he argued, the president has implied authority to act, especially as commander-in-chief. Many of his successors have agreed and usually the courts have gone along with them.

Even so, President Obama's executive order on immigration seems to move us into uncharted, dangerous waters. It is one thing for a president like Lincoln or FDR to act unilaterally in national emergencies. In nearly all the big examples of the past -- like the Emancipation Proclamation -- they were also acting as commander-in-chief. As the one foremost responsible for protecting the nation's existence, a president as commander-in-chief has long been recognized as having inherent powers that stretch well beyond those of normal governance.

Not an emergency
But the challenges of immigration policy do not represent a national emergency, nor do they touch upon the military authorities of a president. Rather, they represent the chronic, abysmal failures of politicians in Washington to govern well from both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. They helped create this immigration mess over a long number of years and working together, they have a public duty to solve it.

The White House has repeatedly pointed to immigration-related executive orders issued by past presidents, notably Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, to support the legality of President Obama's order and to palliate its partisan sting.

Both the executive orders cited, however, can be distinguished from the case at hand. Reagan granted amnesty to 100,000 undocumented immigrants to close a loophole in the comprehensive immigration reform bill passed in 1986.

Bush's order, which granted amnesty to at most 1.5 million people (although the actual number who benefited is likely much smaller), also attempted to clean up a piece of legislation. As Mark Krikorian writes in National Review, the Reagan and Bush examples were presidents trying to implement congressional directives, as is constitutionally permissible, whereas the current action is the President telling Congress "I'm going to implement my own directives."

While the President's impatience is understandable and his anger at Republican intransigence is well placed, that does not justify an abandonment of traditional ways of addressing hard public problems.
Against the spirit of the Constitution

One can argue whether this executive order is legal, but it certainly violates the spirit of the founders. They intentionally focused Article One of the Constitution on the Congress and Article Two on the president. That is because the Congress is the body charged with passing laws and the president is the person charged with faithfully carrying them out.

In effect, the Congress was originally seen as the pre-eminent branch and the president more of a clerk. The president's power grew enormously in the 20th century but even so, the Constitution still envisions Congress and the president as co-equal branches of government -- or as the scholar Richard Neustadt observed, co-equal branches sharing power.

For better or worse, Americans have always expected that in addressing big, tough domestic issues, Congress and the president had to work together to find resolution.
For a president to toss aside such deep traditions of governance is a radical, imprudent step. When a president in day-to-day operations can decide which laws to enforce and which to ignore, where are the limits on his power? Where are the checks and balances so carefully constructed in the Constitution?

If a Democratic president can cancel existing laws on immigration, what is to prevent the next Republican from unilaterally canceling laws on health care?

A bad way to start with new Congress
Coming on the heels of midterm elections that were a clear call for a change of course in Washington, starting in the White House, this is also a discouraging way to open the final years of this presidency.

A new Wall Street Journal/NBC poll finds that by 53-40%, Americans feel positive about the election results; by 56-33%, they want Congress to set policy for the country, not the President; by 57-40% they favor a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants but by 42-32%, they disapprove of Obama overhauling immigration through executive order. Why isn't the White House listening to the public?

In retrospect, it would have been far better if coming out of the elections, the President had said he had promised he would act through executive order before the end of the year, but in light of the election results, he would work with the new Congress for six months. If there were no legislation, he would act on his own.

That would have been a much fairer proposition, would have started out with Republicans on better footing, and would have rallied the public behind him if the GOP refused to cooperate.

Sadly, we instead have an action from the White House that will cast a dark shadow over prospects for legislative cooperation, falls short of what the immigrant population had hoped and steers us into deep, unknown waters in our governance.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/21/politics/obama-immigration-flashback/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

Washington (CNN) -- It was the summer of 2007 and Senator Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., unloaded on his junior colleague, then-Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois.
"You can't come in here and undo everything!" Kennedy told Obama, according to Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-SC.

Kennedy was angry, Graham would later recall, because Obama had signed on to be part of a bipartisan coalition of senators pushing a comprehensive immigration package, and yet he kept straying from the group's agreements.

The bipartisan team, led by Kennedy and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., would consult before voting on amendments, voting against them as a group even when they personally supported them if they felt the amendments would hurt the bill's chance of ultimately passing. Obama -- who by then had launched his presidential campaign -- on several occasions offered or supported amendments that if they passed might defeat final passage of the bill.

Which is how he aroused Kennedy's ire, Graham said, in a story he first told The Hill newspaper last year.
The '07 immigration bill was ultimately filibustered by both Republicans and Democrats. Kennedy, Obama and Graham all voted in favor of moving forward with it.

More than seven years later, Kennedy is dead, unable to corroborate Graham's story. Obama is president, having defeated both McCain and another Republican, Mitt Romney, who took a much harder line against immigration reform. President Obama is today flying across the country to campaign for his executive actions, which will defer deportation for an estimated five million undocumented immigrants.

There hasn't been much coverage of this chapter of Obama's senatorial history. But from the perspective of the members of the McCain/Kennedy coalition, Obama took actions that threatened their very delicate legislative dance, an interesting historical note given the president's announcement and his remarks about congressional inaction.

In his speech to the nation Thursday night announcing his plan, the president had a simple response for GOP critics assailing him for bypassing the legislative branch: "to those members of Congress who question my authority to make our immigration system work better, or question the wisdom of me acting where Congress has failed, I have one answer: Pass a bill."

But to those who were part of the effort to pass a bill in 2007, Obama's incredulity at legislative inaction rings a bit false. To them -- many of whom did not want to be identified because of the sensitivity of criticizing a president publicly -- President Obama sees the immigration effort strictly through a political lens. He is for it when it helps him politically, and when it was politically more problematic to be part of a bipartisan effort, he did what was good for him.

Without question, the efforts that have failed more recently are because of House Republicans. The U.S. Senate passed legislation with overwhelming bipartisan support and House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, failed to bring in to the floor for a vote. Opposition to immigration legislation among Republican House rank and file was so strong, Boehner wouldn't even allow a vote on legislation that had made it out of the House Judiciary Committee.

At the time, the alliance was a risky endeavor. In May 2007, Graham was booed at the South Carolina Republican State Convention because of his immigration alliance with Kennedy.
"There are some people tell me, 'I'll never vote for you again if you do this,'" Graham told CNN for a June 2007 profile. "Well, if I based every decision as a senator on that statement, I would do nothing. So what I'm going to do is lead."

Many forces threatened to scuttle the fragile bipartisan group, big business and labor unions alike. And yet, even though he was part of the coalition, Obama offered an amendment that the larger group opposed, one that would have sunsetted the merit-based evaluation system for immigrants after five years. That amendment failed 42-55.

But Obama also supported four other amendments that the coalition opposed. Two from Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-ND, to sunset both the temporary guest worker visa program and the Y-1 non-immigrant temporary worker visa program after five years; and two amendments from Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-NM, that would have removed the requirement that 'Y' non-immigrant visa holders leave the United
States before they are able to renew their visa, and would have lowered the annual visa quota for guest workers from 400,000 to 200,000 per year.

Obama voted for all five; Kennedy voted against all five, as this reporter noted six years ago.

Dorgan's amendment to sunset the temporary guest worker visa program was of particular issue, since it passed, 49-48, despite calls from the coalition that it constituted a "deal-breaker." Future votes to bring the legislation up for a vote on final passage failed.

"Byron Dorgan did an amendment, and it scuttled the bill," Sen. Charles Schumer, D-NY, said at a press conference on January 31, 2013.

There is much dispute about whether the union-backed amendments Obama supported "were intended to kill the legislation," as McCain has asserted. Clearly the counter-argument is that Obama, Dorgan and Bingaman were attempting to improve the legislation, not kill it.

Still, those involved credit Obama with working hard to make immigration reform happen in 2006, but playing a decidedly different role in 2007.
"The general feeling by those involved is that he parachuted into the meetings a lot," Graham told The Hill. "He was certainly there at all the press conferences but we had a lot of problems with him and quite frankly a couple others who wanted to renegotiate things after they had been closed out by the main group."

The White House was contacted by CNN, but did not immediately respond.

**Grey Templar**

LordofHats wrote:
Grey Templar wrote:
Did you miss where doing that is already illegal?

And easily caught by asking for actual receipts.

The IRS doesn't have the time or manpower to check every receipt (unless as I point out in every thread, you want a police state). Cooking the books is easy and IRS just doesn't have the resources to test them all unless they get pointed to look somewhere.

That and I can always say "Cash transaction. Receipt? I think I threw it away. It's a hammer why would I keep the receipt Mr. IRS man?"

Random auditing. and you can get in trouble for not keeping receipts.

**LordofHats**

Grey Templar wrote:
and you can get in trouble for not keeping receipts.

Do you seriously think the IRS doesn't already do random auditing?

Oh yeah. Only, lots of people don't keep receipts, and the trouble usually amounts to extra sit down time with some IRS paper pusher who has a dozen other cases they have to finish by the end of the week. The IRS is funny like that. They can seize your bank account without a warrant for something as stupid as not putting enough money into it, and then they can't prosecute for tax fraud because they lack sufficient evidence (we actually might want to work on that first one).

**Dreadclaw69**

LordofHats wrote:
Grey Templar wrote:
and you can get in trouble for not keeping receipts.

Do you seriously think the IRS doesn't already do random auditing?

Oh yeah. Only, lots of people don't keep receipts, and the trouble usually amounts to extra sit down time with some IRS paper pusher who has a dozen other cases they have to finish by the end of the week. The IRS is funny like that. They can seize your bank account without a warrant for something as stupid as not putting enough money into it, and then they can't prosecute for tax fraud because they lack sufficient evidence (we actually might want to work on that first one).

Do ICE conduct random inspections of businesses?

**LordofHats**

So now we advocate random searches of persons at any location at any time to see if they're legal? You know who else does that kind of thing? Police states

**d-usa**

ICE already does random inspections to the best of my knowledge. It's not hard for people to jump out the backdoor when the lone inspector shows up. As evidenced that lots of places are still hiring under the table illegal labor despite risks of IRS audits and ICE inspections.

**Dreadclaw69**

d-usa wrote:
ICE already does random inspections to the best of my knowledge. It's not hard for people to jump out the backdoor when the lone inspector shows up. As evidenced that lots of places are still hiring under the table illegal labor despite risks of IRS audits and ICE inspections.

Increase the frequency and the penalties and perhaps that will change

**d-usa**

How much money are you willing to throw at the problem before everybody starts complaining about wasteful Washington bureaucrats?

**CptJake**

d-usa wrote:
How much money are you willing to throw at the problem before everybody starts complaining about wasteful Washington bureaucrats?

Frankly, if it is wasteful any money spent is too much, but that is the point. If instead, it was done smartly, with decent analysis and targeting/profiling you could do a lot of good with out wasting resources, even at current spending levels. But as long as Big Business has Big Govt covering for it and enabling this crap, throwing more money at it won't solve anything.

**agnosto**

How many legal residents/citizens are you willing to ask for documentation with your profiling program? No one that looks like you, I'm sure.

True story. My best friend is Native American, we took a trip to metamuros during college and were stopped by border patrol on the way back to Brownsville. The agent asked my friend for his green card, he laughed and asked the agent to show him his documents (we were on foot and were walking back after a night of drinking). Guy starts to look irate and blusters, buddy pulls out his tribal citizen card and shows it to him and says, "from my side of the table, you the illegal alien buddy."

**LordofHats**

"from my side of the table, you the illegal alien buddy."

Brass balls son

**Dreadclaw69**

agnosto wrote:
How many legal residents/citizens are you willing to ask for documentation with your profiling program? No one that looks like you, I'm sure.

A cynic might say that you're trying to insinuate racism. For now I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. I'm unsure what you mean when you say "your profiling program". When did I espouse a profiling program?

**agnosto**

Dreadclaw69 wrote:
agnosto wrote:
How many legal residents/citizens are you willing to ask for documentation with your profiling program? No one that looks like you, I'm sure.

A cynic might say that you're trying to insinuate racism. For now I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. I'm unsure what you mean when you say "your profiling program". When did I espouse a profiling program?

The one in the post above mine, Cpt Jake's. I don't know where you got that I was speaking to anything that you wrote since he's the only one to write about profiling so far.

I agree with securing our borders and adequately funding the agencies responsible for that; I vehemently disagree with profiling and other jackboot tactics that create the feeling of a police state in a supposedly otherwise " free" society.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

LordofHats wrote:
"from my side of the table, you the illegal alien buddy."

Brass balls son

He's notorious for saying undiplomatic things while intoxicated. There was this one time in Itaewon, Seoul... I'll just say that we made some new MP friends that night..

**IronWarLeg**

LordofHats wrote:
Grey Templar wrote:
Did you miss where doing that is already illegal?

And easily caught by asking for actual receipts.

The IRS doesn't have the time or manpower to check every receipt (unless as I point out in every thread, you want a police state). Cooking the books is easy and IRS just doesn't have the resources to test them all unless they get pointed to look somewhere.

That and I can always say "Cash transaction. Receipt? I think I threw it away. It's a hammer why would I keep the receipt Mr. IRS man?"

Chances are your going to have a sitdown with an IRS Revenue Officer, not a random "paper pusher".

If you are picked for an audit (they are random unless a tip is called in), and are unable to substantiate the credits/expenses that you have taken in a sit-down with your tax examiner, they do not allow the credit/expense on your taxes. While we do not have the manpower to audit everyone's taxes, and honestly since sequester we audit less every year, when they do pick an audit they don't mess around. They will ask for every receipt or bank statement necessary to satisfy burden of proof for the expense.

Secondly, it doesn't make the news often, but the IRS works closely with outside agencies when other criminal activity is found, and if an auditor thinks there are some shenanigans going on in the business they will share that info with the appropriate authorities.

In short, "Cash transaction. Receipt? I think I threw it away. It's a hammer why would I keep the receipt Mr. IRS man?" would get a response similar to: "Because it was claimed as an expense on your taxes, no receipt, no deduction." To further this, if the examiner discovers that there are a lot of items that can't be substantiated they start getting itchy on the "frivolous return penalty" trigger, which really starts to add up.

I work for IRS collections, the people that do what you are talking about above are the ones that usually end up talking to me, its only a matter of time.

**Dreadclaw69**

agnosto wrote:
The one in the post above mine, Cpt Jake's. I don't know where you got that I was speaking to anything that you wrote since he's the only one to write about profiling so far.

I agree with securing our borders and adequately funding the agencies responsible for that; I vehemently disagree with profiling and other jackboot tactics that create the feeling of a police state in a supposedly otherwise " free" society.

My apologies. I missed his comment about profiling and thought your comment was to me after I proposed expanding e-verify. I am still a little perturbed about your comment about any profiling will mean "No one that looks like you, I'm sure".

**Tannhauser42**

agnosto wrote:

I agree with securing our borders and adequately funding the agencies responsible for that; I vehemently disagree with profiling and other jackboot tactics that create the feeling of a police state in a supposedly otherwise " free" society.

But what, exactly, does "securing our borders" mean? Not exactly directed at you, but a general observation here. It's a pretty damned big border (2000 miles with Mexico, and let's not forget the 5500 mile one on the north side, too, and the 95000 miles of shoreline). How secure is secure? And what does it take to make it that secure? Do we buy the Great Wall of China and ship it here block by block (metaphorically speaking)? Do we rebuild the Berlin Wall, but make it 2000 miles long instead? Do we plop down a tower every few miles with some agents camped out in them? Constant drone surveillance? Cameras everywhere? Roving wiener dog attack packs? I like the idea of border security as much as the next person, but sometimes my mind boggles when I try to think about exactly what that entails.

**Grey Templar**

LordofHats wrote:
Grey Templar wrote:
and you can get in trouble for not keeping receipts.

Do you seriously think the IRS doesn't already do random auditing?

No, I was insinuating they in fact do do that. And that we just need to enforce existing laws.

**Breotan**

Grey Templar wrote:
And that we just need to enforce existing laws.

Can't force the President to adjust his "proprietorial discretion" to meet our standards.

**agnosto**

Dreadclaw69 wrote:
agnosto wrote:
The one in the post above mine, Cpt Jake's. I don't know where you got that I was speaking to anything that you wrote since he's the only one to write about profiling so far.

I agree with securing our borders and adequately funding the agencies responsible for that; I vehemently disagree with profiling and other jackboot tactics that create the feeling of a police state in a supposedly otherwise " free" society.

My apologies. I missed his comment about profiling and thought your comment was to me after I proposed expanding e-verify. I am still a little perturbed about your comment about any profiling will mean "No one that looks like you, I'm sure".

I suppose I could have been bothered to use the quote function.

My comment was in regards to the vast majority of people who seem to think profiling is a great idea. There really is no way to defend it without inserting an ism (racism, jingoism, sexism, etc), it's just plain bad policy in a free society. I've lived in two other countries and have been on the receiving end of it often enough to know what it feels like; I've also heard first hand accounts of Navajos being stopped and asked for ID in Arizona because of that silly law they passed and Arpaio's overzealous people.

So, profiling targets specific populations, inevitably those who fit a certain phenotype, for different treatment under the law, the same law that guarantees equal treatment? That's a slippery slope to the Japanese-American internment camps in the US during WWII while German-Americans were treated as citizens. Law enforcement personnel gp around hasseling american citizens for their papers and then cart deport them when they can't produce any....because they're American; it's happened, a quick search on google will show you numerous cases.

Yes, illegal immigration is a problem but profiling is not the answer, not if anyone wants America to even come close to resembling the "land of the free" or does that freedom end if you look too brown like Mark Little?