It's About Immigration, Not Impeachment

John Boehner's latest boner, announced last week, is to sue Barack Obama over the latter's allegedly broad and frequent use of executive orders to do the job the American people elected Obama to do.  It has the merit--in fact, its only merit--of calling attention to the job that Boehner and his House of Representative cronies have failed to do:  legislate in the interests of the American people, as opposed to GOP donors.  Apart from this, it proves once again that Boehner has the political and policy instincts of a pet rock:  his announcement only drew donations from Democratic donors and laughter from just about everyone else.  And none of this even touches that fact, frequently documented in the wake of the announced suit, that Obama's use of executive orders is far less than that of such Republican predecessors as Reagan and George W. Bush.

But hold on for a moment:  Boehner took pains to say that his planned suit is "not about impeachment."  On the other hand, he took pains to not specify the offending executive actions.  I suspect that's because the threat of a suit is an attempt to bluff Obama out of taking executive action in an area where he has, thus far, only dipped his executive toe:  immigration.

Thus far, Obama has initiated only two major initiatives via executive action:  the provisional waiver program, which allows the undocumented to apply for a waiver of inadmissibility without leaving the country; and the DACA program, which is essentially an exercise of prosecutorial discretion in favor of undocumented young people.  Neither of these programs offer the possibility of permanent relief for these individuals and, in fact, such relief is not possible without legislation authorizing it. 

But, under current law, Obama has broad authority to act on behalf of the nation's immigrant population, which he has thus far refrained from using, in the hope of encouraging Congress to work with him on a long-term comprehensive legislative solution.  His reward for this has been Boehner's threatened suit, and this additional news from the past week.  And I am certain that the latter is the excuse for the former:  now that the legislative path is closed, Boehner is attempting to head off Obama's previous promise to act on his own, if Congress (meaning, really, the House) refused to work with him.

My advice to Obama?  Go for it.  Use your executive authority to the maximum, by providing temporary protective status for all of the undocumented (except those with criminal records).  Give work cards to those old enough to work.  Stop the GOP greedheads from using 11 million human beings as a political football and a fundraising tool.  They've been held hostage to the partisan divide long enough, turning a legal issue into a humanitarian one.

And don't worry about Boehner's empty suit, or the equally empty threat of impeachment.  If either become a reality, it will not lead to your political demise, but that of the Republicans.  You've got a country to run.  You've got people to serve, whether they have the right papers or not.  It's time for everyone to get back to governing, and you're the one who needs to make it happen.

Yes, you are.  Yes, you can.  And yes, you will.  I'm sure of it.