Another View: Rubio's Immigration Bill Allows Lawsuits to Gut Border Security
According to the Washington Examiner’s Conn Carroll, the Schumer-Rubion Immigration Bill has serious problems. Mr. Carroll maintains that either “Sen. Marco Rubio failed to stay awake in his civil procedure class at the University of Miami Law School, or Sen. Chuck Schumer’s lawyers pulled a fast one on him.” Here are his concerns with the bill:
1) If liberal activist groups can challenge any of the bill’s security triggers in court, then, after 10 years, the secretary of homeland security can grant currently illegal immigrants permanent legal status anyway. That’s what the bill currently says. If Rubio does not like it, he should introduce an amendment to remove this section of the bill.
2) The border fence is the only border security item that the bill exempts from nonconstitutional challenges. Challenges to any other security measure in the law are still vulnerable to suit.
3) Nothing in the bill stops the secretary of homeland security from granting legal status to currently illegal immigrants if the E-Verify and visa entry-exit systems are not up and running. The secretary can just say that they are, no matter what the facts on the ground actually are. If you don’t think this is possible, just remember how Obama ignored Congress and the War Powers Act and bombed Libya anyway, despite the fact that his own lawyers determined the bombing was a military action.
Until there is a citizen suit provision in the bill, empowering U.S. citizens to challenge the secretary’s determinations that the security measures are in fact in place, there simply is no guarantee that they will ever happen.
