releases: http://byrne.house.gov//media-center/press-releases/byrne-challenges-obama-immigration-action-in-speech-from-house-floor
Data license: MIT · Data source: dwillis/congress-press
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| http://byrne.house.gov//media-center/press-releases/byrne-challenges-obama-immigration-action-in-speech-from-house-floor | Byrne Challenges Obama Immigration Action in Speech from House Floor | 2014-12-09 | 2014 | 2014-12 | Republican | House | AL | Bradley Byrne | B001289 | byrne.house.gov | legacy | In a speech from the floor of the House of Representatives, Congressman Bradley Byrne (AL-1) urged President Barack Obama to abandon his “ill-conceived executive action” on immigration. Congressman Byrne also used the example of a Republican President unilaterally suspending enforcement of the Clean Air Act to demonstrate the dangerous precedent President Obama’s executive action sets. Byrne said: “Mr. Speaker, I want to ask for a moment that my colleagues imagine a situation. Imagine a few years down the road, a Republican President announces he has instructed the Justice Department to no longer enforce the Clean Air Act. That he has told the Justice Department to no longer prosecute violations of the Clean Air Act. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle for rise up with frustration and indignation. They would say the President has failed to faithfully execute the laws passed by Congress as he is Constitutionally required to do. And they would be right to do so. Well Mr. Speaker, that is exactly what is happening in our country today. President Obama has chosen unilaterally not to enforce our nation's long standing immigration laws. He has made this decision without any consultation with Congress and entirely own his own. Think for a moment about the precedent this action sets. That a President can alter long standing law simply through an executive memo and his words. A President can simply say that he is not going to enforce the law. That would be frightening to all Americans regardless of political belief. Let's be clear what this action is not. It is not prosecutorial discretion. No one doubts that the President has prosecutorial discretion, but this goes far behind that power and enters into new territory that frankly, has never before been touched. I believe this issue was settled long ago, before our country was even founded. You see in the 17th Century in Britain during this big fight between the Kings of England and Parliament, the King said that he had prerogative powers to override Parliament. And there were battles, wars in Britain about how this was going to be settled. Parliament determined in consultation with the Courts that the King couldn’t own his own do that. The King could not simply say that he would dispense with the laws or suspend their operations for a period of time. Our Founding Fathers knew this history well, and when they put together the Constitution of our country and Article II, they had that in their mind when they gave to the President the obligation, not the option, to faithfully execute the laws. All the laws of the United States, regardless of if the President agrees with them or not. I would say this type of executive action is clearly not what the founders had in mind when they drafted our Constitution. The main overriding goal of our forefathers was to prevent the Executive from becoming too powerful, and they went to great effort to ensure a strong system of checks and balances. President Obama’s executive action runs in the face of how our government was designed to operate. Let's also remember that this year, President Obama said his policies, all of them, were on the ballot in the midterm elections. And the American people went to the polls and soundly rejected the President's policies. They made clear they were not supportive of more unilateral, executive action. They wanted us to work together. And as a Congress, we warned the President not to go forward with this executive action. Mr. Speaker, we need a solution to our nation's immigration problem. But by using Executive Action the President has made finding common ground far more difficult. I believe the House should rise above the actions of the President, and early next year we should send the President real border security legislation, similar to legislation passed this past summer yet the Senate wouldn’t even take up. The House should pass legislation to update and fix the worker VISA program. The House should pass legislation to put in place E-Verify for all employers. The House should pass legislation to tighten internal security. Then, and only then, should we have a discussion about what to do with the millions of people in this country illegally. See Mr. Speaker, the more the President acts outside the bounds of his powers, the harder it becomes to actually achieve a solution. It leads me to wonder. Does President Obama actually want a long-term, lasting solution to immigration? His actions imply otherwise. So Mr. Speaker, I ask the President to rethink his approach to the immigration debate. I urge him to abandon this ill-conceived executive action and instead to come to the table and work with Republicans and Democrats in Congress to find commonsense solutions that we need to find for these problems. We are capable of doing that. That is how our Founders intended our government to operate and anything other than that is a disservice to the American people. And I yield back. | 1 | 2026-03-30T12:14:52Z | 2026-03-30T12:14:52Z |