In response to a lawsuit filed against President Obama’s executive amnesty by Texas and 25 others states, California leads a contingency of 14 mostly Democratic states pushing forward the Obama plan to grant freedom from deportation to five million illegal aliens.
Thursday, the Los Angeles Times reported, lawyers for these states and the District of Columbia filed a brief demanding that a federal appeals court abolish the district’s court’s ruling or limit the ruling to apply to only Texas and the other 25 states that filed the suit.
Breitbart News reported in February that Texas’s U.S. District Judge Andrew S. Hanen ruled that the president did not have the authority to grant the temporary amnesty and prohibited Obama, along with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and other relevant agencies and departments under the executive branch, “from implementing any and all aspects or phases” of the President’s executive amnesty plan.
The pro-amnesty lawyers argued in the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans that “A single state cannot dictate national immigration policy.”
The Times indicated that the suit is a legal strategy coordinated with the Obama administration and reinforces the division between red and blue states on the issue of executive amnesty for illegal immigrants.
In the friend-of-the-court brief, California, New York, Illinois and the other states say that the Obama amnesty will give the states “far reaching benefits” and more tax revenue.
The Center for American Progress, founded by John Podesta and known for its leftist agenda, contends that executive amnesty would raise California’s tax revenues alone by almost $1 billion over five years.
California Attorney Gen. Kamala Harris said regarding the Thursday’s filing, “With over 1 million hard-working Californians eligible … our state has a major stake in the successful implementation of the president’s immigration actions”.