“It would be my hope that the president’s lawyers would advise him on the broadest possible prosecutorial discretion, that would include actions to say that it would extend DACA for a [longer] period . . . that it would extend DACA to the parents of the DREAMers, that it would also extend protection to the parents of U.S. citizens, parents who are not, shall we say fully documented. . . .” — House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Univision Radio, 8/13/14
Fact Check: In this interview on Spanish-language Univision, Pelosi reveals her contempt for constitutional government for all to see. She’s urging President Obama to ignore responsibility of her branch of government to make law and expand his arbitrary DACA edict, which gave legal status and work permits to illegal aliens in the Dream Act category.
Like Obama, she justifies this abuse of power with the legal principle of prosecutorial discretion, which holds that a government with limited resources can set priorities of enforcement, focusing on some violators and not so much on others. The Obama administration twists this principle by saying that because it has limited resources to enforce immigration law, it must therefore exempt entire classes, such as the DREAMers, from enforcement—and reward their lawbreaking by giving them work permits.
Clearly for Obama and Pelosi, prosecutorial discretion is just a pretext for ignoring laws they don’t like. As for inadequate resources, it is abundantly clear that the administration doesn’t want sufficient resources because it has never requested them. And when states have passed laws to offer their assistance to immigration law enforcement, the administration—far from welcoming the offer—has launched lawsuits to overturn those statutes.
Pelosi’s statement also reveals greater honesty about the real agenda of Dream Act advocates. In the past they argued that the DREAMers, young people brought here illegally by their parents, should get legal status (amnesty) because they should not have to pay for their parents’ lawbreaking. By advocating amnesty for the parents too, Pelosi reveals that willful lawbreaking really doesn’t concern her and that the focus on the DREAMers was only a ploy to create sympathy for a wider amnesty.
Both Pelosi and Obama justify unconstitutional edicts with humanitarian concerns, but one can’t help but notice that any form of amnesty, sooner or later, will create a new and strong voting bloc for their party. The name of their game is power, not compassion.