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Any dreams President Obama may have had that the Supreme Court would approve his executive actions granting amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants turned into a nightmare Thursday when the high court refused to hear the matter.
The court ruled: “The judgment is affirmed by an equally divided court.”
This meant that the decision of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit was upheld, which ruled in favor of 26 states, led by the state of Texas, and against the Obama administration.
The tug-of-war between the states and the administration began more than a year-and-a-half ago. The New York Times reported:
With the flick of a pen just before Thanksgiving in 2014, President Obama ordered that nearly five million illegal immigrants be allowed to “come out of the shadows” and work legally in the United States.
Standing at the same lectern where he had announced the death of Osama bin Laden three years earlier, Mr. Obama insisted in a speech to the nation that his plan for immigrants was a fully legal response to a Republican-controlled Congress that had refused his plea for an overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws.
The president took this action on his own only after having failed to get a comprehensive immigration package approved through the legislative process.
“The actions I’m taking are not only lawful, they’re the kinds of actions taken by every single Republican president and every single Democratic president for the past half-century,” Obama said at the time. “There are actions I have the legal authority to take as president, the same kinds of actions taken by Democratic and Republican presidents before me, that will help make our immigration system more fair and more just.”
However, Obama’s appraisal didn’t meet legal scrutiny. Every level of federal court, beginning with U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen sitting in a Texas courtroom, disagreed. The Times reported:
But on Thursday, the Supreme Court disagreed. In a 4-to-4 decision, the justices let stand a lower court ruling that Mr. Obama had overstepped his authority. The decision freezes the president’s actions for the balance of his term, leaving the future of the program — and millions of undocumented workers — in limbo.
Obama was quick to blame Republican lawmakers for the decision. The Associated Press reported:
BREAKING: Obama says Supreme Court deadlock on immigration was consequence of GOP refusal to consider Merrick Garland’s nomination.
— The Associated Press (@AP) June 23, 2016
The president also said:
BREAKING: Obama says Supreme Court move on immigration “takes us further from the country we aspire to be”
— The Associated Press (@AP) June 23, 2016
The United States is, and always has been, a country of immigrants — a country of legal immigrants. We are, first and foremost, a nation of laws, and everyone, including the president of the United States, is subject to those laws.
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