Obama Gives up on Amnesty for Illegals

President-elect Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election has caused President Obama to give up on his extra-legal amnesty for illegal aliens. Lawyers from the Justice Department and from 26 states that challenged Obama’s so-called executive immigration actions filed a joint motion Friday asking that remaining proceedings in the suit be put on hold until the Trump administration figures out how it wants to proceed:

Given the change in Administration, the parties jointly submit that a brief stay of any further litigation in this Court before beginning any further proceedings would serve judicial efficiency and economy so that the parties have a better understanding of how they might choose to move forward.

Andrew Hanen, the Brownsville, Texas-based federal judge assigned to the case, issued a preliminary injunction in January 2015 barring the Obama administration from expanding a program to grant quasi-legal status and work permits to illegal immigrants who entered the country as children, as well as a new effort to grant similar status to illegal-immigrant parents of U.S. citizens and green card holders:

Hanen’s preliminary injunction against the expanded Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and the new Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA) program was upheld by a federal appeals court. The Obama administration appealed to the Supreme Court, which took the case but deadlocked, 4-4, in the dispute earlier this year.

The result left the preliminary injunction in place and the Obama plans dashed for the remainder of his term.

The Obama Amnesty would have applied to more than four million illegal immigrants who were either brought to the U.S. as children, or who were parents of American citizens or legal immigrants.

As we have reported here and here, a crackdown on illegal immigration is one of the top priorities of the incoming Trump administration. Trump’s Contract With the American Voter — his plan for the first hundred days of his presidency — includes canceling every unconstitutional executive action, memorandum and order issued by President Obama, such as DACA and DAPA.

Under the Obama Amnesty, illegals were to be granted tentative legal status for three years, preventing them from being deported and entitling them to work permits, which would in turn earn them drivers’ licenses and some taxpayer benefits. The Washington Times notes that Obama had said for years that he lacked the power to issue such an amnesty, but he discovered the power after his party suffered massive losses in the 2014 midterm election.

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