AG Wayne Stenehjem Joins North Dakota To Texas Immigration Lawsuit

According to a source in the Legislature, North Dakota Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem has decided to join North Dakota to Texas Governor-elect Greg Abbott’s lawsuit over immigration.

The suit asks the federal courts to block President Barack Obama’s executive action on immigration which would grant amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants.

There were 19 other states signed on as a part of the lawsuit. North Dakota, I believe, makes 20.

Here’s an article about the lawsuit from Fox News, reporting on December 3:

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.

“The ability of the president to dispense with laws was specifically considered and unanimously rejected at the Constitutional Convention,” he said.

Abbott specifically cited Article 2, Section 3 of the Constitution which states the president “shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”

He said the lawsuit asks the court to require Obama to go through Congress before enforcing laws, “rather than making them up himself.”

However, a White House official defended the actions as perfectly within the president’s authority.

“The Supreme Court and Congress have made clear that federal officials can set priorities in enforcing our immigration laws, and we are confident that the President’s executive actions are well within his legal authorities,” the official told Fox News.

I tend to be a bit of an open borders guy when it comes to immigration. I am opposed to government restrictions on exporting or importing goods and services. Why would I oppose the free flow of labor as well? I think immigration is a net benefit to our nation, and while people coming here to set up shop on our generous system of welfare and other social benefits is problematic, the positive economic impact of an influx of labor outweighs that negative in my mind.

That being said, the rule of law matters. Also, process matters. The President is not an elected monarch. Presidents don’t get to be above the law. Abbot’s lawsuit is righteous, and I’m happy to hear that Stenehjem has joined North Dakota to it.

Meanwhile, President Obama is taunting opponents of his executive order, saying that whoever the next President is won’t dare rescind it.

“It’s true a future administration might try to reverse some of our policies. But I’ll be honest with you — the American people basically have a good heart and want to treat people fairly and every survey shows that if, in fact, somebody has come out and subjected themselves to a background check, registered, paid their taxes, the American people support allowing them to stay. So any future administration that tried to punish people for doing the right thing, I think, would not have the support of the American people,” Obama said in Nashville today. “It’s true, theoretically, a future administration could do something that I think would be very damaging. It’s not likely, politically, that they reverse everything we’ve done.”