Seventeen States Sue Over Amnesty Plan

While national Republicans seem to be dragging their feet on stopping President Barack Obama’s unilateral and unconstitutional plan to “temporarily” allow illegal aliens to remain and work in the U.S., states are taking matters into their own hands.

Seventeen states, led by border state Texas, are suing the president over this plan. From Fox News:

The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Texas on Wednesday, and names the heads of the top immigration enforcement agencies as defendants.

[Texas Gov.-elect Greg] Abbott, in a news conference in Austin, said the “broken” immigration system should be fixed by Congress, not by “presidential fiat.”

He said President Obama’s recently announced executive actions — a move designed to spare as many as 5 million people living illegally in the United States from deportation — “directly violate the fundamental promise to the American people” by running afoul of the Constitution.

I’m pleased to know my home state is part of the lawsuit. The plaintiff states allege that the president’s scheme will “exacerbate the humanitarian crisis along the southern border, which will affect increased state investment in law enforcement, health care and education.”

The president’s job is to execute the laws, not make them. That’s the role of Congress. His move doesn’t stand without precedent, however. In Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court found a previously unknown “right of privacy” in the U.S. Constitution for women to kill their unborn children before the age of viability. The judicial branch is directed to interpret the law, not write it.