In a story about President Barack Obama’s potential executive actions, the Los Angeles Times suggested that illegal immigrants have a “right” to work permits even though that is not allowed under U.S. law.
The headline of the Los Angeles Times story about Obama potentially granting temporary amnesty and work permits to five million illegal immigrants blares, “White House pursuing plan to expand immigrant rights.”
Last week on the Senate floor, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) blasted the Obama administration for declaring amnesty “as a civil right.” Bewildered, Sessions, the former U.S. attorney, wondered how Attorney General Eric Holder could “assert that people have a Constitutional right to enter unlawfully and be given amnesty.”
“That’s an argument against the very idea of a nation state and the idea of a nation’s borders,” he continued. “Of course, there is and can be no civil right to enter a country unlawfully and then to demand lawful status and equal citizenship. Of course there is not.”
He said the actual legal rights that are being violated are those of American citizens who have “sweat and bled and died for this country” and have “been called on to serve and responded, paid their taxes, raised their children, tried to do the right thing day after day.”
“So what about their rights?” Sessions asked. “Will no one rise to their defense?”
Sessions, who has said that the Senate should not approve any border bill that does not preclude Obama from using federal funds to implement his potential executive actions, said proclaiming that amnesty is a civil right is “the kind of thinking that’s got us into this fix, and it’s encouraged the flow of unlawful immigration.”