Here is a story of a failed Republican opposition party laid bare before the American people.

In a letter from the Social Security Administration responding to inquiries posed by Sens. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) and Ben Sasse (R-NE), it was revealed that 541,000 Social Security cards have been illegally issued to Obama’s DACA amnesty recipients as of Sept. 30, 2014. That number has likely grown over the past six months. Unfortunately, GOP insouciance to the rule of law is just as much to blame as Obama and his partners in crime.

For those of us disappointed with the lackluster GOP reaction to Obama’s mass executive amnesty in November of last year, remember that Republicans did absolutely nothing in response to the 2012 DACA amnesty. Mitt Romney refused to make it an issue in the presidential campaign and most Republicans didn’t even put out a press release opposing it. That amnesty for younger illegal aliens was just as unlawful as the “DAPA” amnesty of 2014, but Obama was given free reign.

Republicans, at least on a party level, declined to even pursue legal recourse in the court system. Instead, Kris Kobach, the famed immigration enforcement attorney, took the initiative and sued the administration on behalf of 10 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.

On April 4, 2013, Judge Reed O’Connor of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas ruled that the Obama administration’s DACA program was a clear violation of Section 1225(b)(2)(A) of the INA, which requires ICE agents to place all illegal aliens into removal proceedings. However, he said that ICE agents lacked standing to sue the administration in Article III Courts and were directed to lodge their complaint to the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), an administrative panel dedicated to mediating disputes between federal employees and the government.

After two years of being led down the garden path, they finally got a hearing before the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. Recently, the 5th Circuit tossed out the lawsuit, amazingly, noting that ICE agents lack standing to sue, even though they are being forced to execute actions antithetical to their job description and the statutes of the United States Congress. Obama has even threatened agents who fail to implement his unconstitutional policies.

Accordingly, we are now stuck with a program that is clearly unconstitutional, but we lack the ability to stop it.

What are the consequences?

With Obama approving DACA applications at over a 90% rate, almost no criminal elements are being weeded out. Indeed many DACA recipients have already been arrested for criminal activity. They all have Social Security cards. And remember, even if conservatives can put an end to DACA and terminate the work permits, the Social Security numbers are there to stay.

In addition, the fiscal cost of this Social Security charade is enormous. An illegal immigrant who receives a Social Security number will be entitled to refundable tax credits, Social Security retirement benefits, and Social Security disability benefits. An individual low-income illegal immigrant – who would have no net tax liability – could be eligible to receive up to $3 in Social Security benefits for every $1 contributed through payroll taxes, and could even get up to $35,000 in tax credits for their household in a single year. Remember, that most of these young illegal immigrants are predominantly low-income earners.

This is fundamentally unfair.

The GOP establishment has run away from this issue because of the oleaginous arguments put forth by the left about sympathy for those who came here “of no fault of their own.” But they also came here of no fault of our basic laws of sovereignty and no fault of the American taxpayer. Their predicament is not the fault of our laws; it’s the fault of their parents and countries of origin that have violated our sovereignty.

Even one who believes in granting them amnesty at some point has no justification in supporting federal benefits for a new population at a time when we can’t afford the welfare state for native Americans and legal immigrants. Moreover, it is fundamentally unfair to legal immigrants who are not eligible for federal assistance for at least five years after receiving a green card.

If Congress truly cared about fairness and the rule of law, they would pass Rep. Randy Weber’s (R-TX) bill, H.R. 1332, which would block both the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and child tax credit for DACA and DAPA applicants.

If Republican presidential candidates really cared about this issue, they would embrace fairness in Social Security and tax credits as a campaign issue, instead of just touting a talking point about “securing the border” when finally forced to discuss immigration. (See “541,000 Illegally Issued Social Security Cards? GOP Yawns” HERE)

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