Westmoreland Condemns President Obama's Decision to Ignore Federal Law

Press Release

Today, the Obama Administration announced it will stop deporting illegal immigrants who are younger and came to the United States as children and will instead grant them work permits. The controversial new plan is expected to affect upwards of 800,000 illegal immigrants currently residing in the United States.

"The president's announcement shows his complete disregard for our laws," stated Westmoreland. "If he does not like the law, he should work with Congress to change the law in a legal and proper manner. Until then, instructing federal officers not to enforce the laws on the books only encourages others to break our laws. We have an illegal immigration problem in this country because we have a broken legal immigration system. But that doesn't mean we should take the easy route and just ignore the problem. Instead, we need to work to fix it. Of course, the campaigner-in-chief doesn't have time to actually legislate -- he's too busy giving speeches and collecting campaign checks. So he's decided he will just dictate law from the campaign trail rather than bother with actually following the rule of law established in the Constitution. It's absolutely unacceptable."

Under this new plan, illegal immigrants will be immune from deportation if they came to the United States before they turned 16 years old, are younger than 30 years old, and have been in the country for at least five continuous years. In addition, they must have no criminal history, have graduated from a US high school or earned a GED, or served in the military. If they meet these criteria, they will also be eligible for a work permit good for two years with no limits on how many times it can be renewed. Officials have stated that while children who are younger than 16 will not be eligible for the deportation waiver, they too will not be deported.

"President Obama is the president of this republic -- not the dictator of his very own kingdom," stated Westmoreland. "He cannot just dictate which laws passed by Congress should be enforced. They should all be enforced. If we allow our president to simply instruct federal officials to disregard this law, it opens the flood gate to giving him almost unlimited power. Clearly, the president is trying to regulate the controversial DREAM Act into law in an election year to win support at the voting booth. And if I have anything to say about it, it's not going to work."

The announcement has been extremely controversial and many members of Congress have expressed their outrage. Although nothing has been announced yet, most likely action will be taken as early as next week to stop the president from enacting this plan.

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