President Obama’s recent “executive action” regarding the Federal government’s laws respecting naturalization marks the first time in U.S. history that a president has usurped the authority of Congress “to establish an uniform rule of naturalization” and established the United States as a sanctuary for illegal immigrants. He has stated to illegal immigrants that they do not have to follow the laws of the United States.

There are two major characteristics of this action. One is that his action is not unique in its nature. Many city mayors across the U.S. have previously declared their cities to be sanctuaries for illegal immigrants. The first big city mayor to do this was Mayor Harold Washington of Chicago on March 7, 1985. In 1979 the Police Department of Los Angeles, CA made a similar statement -- Special Order 40 -- that persons in that city could reside there without fear of being scrutinized for their immigration status.

All of these so-called executive-order sanctuary statements are improper and technically a violation of Federal law.  It is also illegal for anyone in the U.S. to encourage illegal immigration or aid it in any way. In this respect President Obama has violated not just the U.S. Constitution but the 1996 Immigration Act.

The second characteristic is that President Obama is doing this to promote and expand the power of his political party, the Democrat Party of the United States. All of the major politicians who have acted to promote illegal immigration are Democrats. The only major politician to do so who was a Republican was New York City’s mayor Michael Bloomberg and he was only continuing a practice that had already been established by previous Democrat mayors Koch and Dinkins.

Democrat officials first began interjecting themselves into immigration policy in 1941 when FDR allowed his Secretary of State to secretly negotiate with the President of Mexico to establish the guest worker program known as the Bracero Program. This effort was not approved by Congress, but did specify of number of rules, a guest-worker identification procedure, and made an attempt to make sure those hired in the U.S. were fairly paid and housed. 

However, LBJ canceled the Bracero program in 1964 and instead encouraged illegal immigrants to go to the U.S. by greatly expanding the entitlements available to persons living in cities. These benefits were freely given to residents based only on the fact that they resided in cities. This strategy was greatly expanded by Chicago in 1985 when its mayor, Harold Washington, officially declared in an Executive Order that all city benefits would be made available to residents “regardless of citizenship status.” It should be noted that Mayor Washington had no legal authority to issue such an executive order.

Nothing was done to stem the tide of the Democrat Party’s Sanctuary Movement, and other cities in the U.S. followed Chicago’s example. A few months later New York’s mayor Ed Koch distributed a “memo” to city agencies specifically stating that all city benefits and privileges be given to residents regardless of citizenship status. 

What has followed has been an avalanche of illegal immigrant entries into the U.S.  From 1990 to 2000 the U.S. grew by 30 million persons, the most ever in a ten-year period, and the majority of these persons are illegal immigrants and their children. 

Illegal immigration is the greatest scheme of political corruption in history and is already the most expensive. Illegal immigrants are given over two dozen benefits and those such as public education are extremely costly and result in skyrocketing property taxes for those who are legal residents of the country. The full extent of the cost of illegal immigration has yet to be fully explored since the greatest costs are not borne by the immigrants themselves but by those government employees who serve them.

I have argued that the power of the public-sector unions has promoted illegal immigration, since in such states as Illinois teacher unions are the biggest campaign contributors, and four of the top 12 political donors are public sector unions. In addition, Federal workers also make donations to the Democrat Party in order to keep their patronage jobs.

The costs of President Obama’s illegal move will be measured in the trillions of dollars, and one could argue that the major reason he has already created so much national debt is to support the public costs of illegal immigrants in the biggest cities.  When one factors in not just the current costs of, for example, public school students, but the future costs of the public teacher union pensions, these costs are multiplied and become fixed into the expenditures of local cities decades into the future.

To stop the government’s promotion of illegal immigration one must first attack the raison d’etre of the sanctuary policies: the public-sector unions’ need for residents. Only when public-sector unions are abolished, and public pension programs are replaced by self-financed 401(K) pensions, can the iron grip of liberal programs on the earnings of the American working class be broken, and the rule of the Constitution re-established.

Analysts are stunned by Obama’s move since American voters recently rejected Democrats in the Senate, many state houses, and other offices throughout the country. Immigration reform was a major issue, but President Obama remained adamant in his insistence that he will take executive action and write his own law. His action proves that he does not care about the will of the American voters. This is because he does not participate in America’s Constitutional Democracy. He learned from Chicago’s mayors how to rule as an autocrat, how to support the patronage army of government-dependent workers who rule the nation from within.  He has acted to usurp Congress’ power of the purse and sees his role as an historic one: to create an America that permanently votes for his Democrat Party in national elections. 

Recent polls and the election mean nothing to him, he is looking forward to the day when reliable minority voters are a majority of the nation’s population and will guarantee the U.S. is ruled not by the Constitution but by the leaders of the Democrat Party and their campaign contributors.