Dismissed or rejected by Congress?  No problem.  Just effect the consequences of the would-be bill by memo to regulatory or enforcement agencies.  Cap-and-trade legislation, gun regulation, net neutrality legislation -- all dismissed or rejected by Congress. Undaunted, the Obama has used the EPA to try to effect carbon control, AFT to try to implement gun controls and FCC to try to effect net neutrality.

Now it is the DreamAct, twice rejected by Congress.  Just this last Friday the Obama administration issued a mandate to ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) to use "prosecutorial discretion" with regard to enforcing immigration laws.  According to Director Morton this means, "federal immigration officials do not have to deport illegal aliens if they are enrolled in any type of education program, if their family members have volunteered for U.S. military service, or even if they are pregnant or nursing."

Charles Krauthammer had sharp words for the Obama congressional end-run:

This is outright lawlessness on the part of the administration. Whatever the politics of this, we do have a constitution. And under it, the legislature, the Congress enacts the laws and the executive executes them. It doesn't make them up.

The DREAM Act was rejected by Congress. It is now being enacted by the executive, despite the express will of the Congress. That is lawless. It may not be an explicit executive order, it's an implicit one. It's exactly as Obama is doing with the EPA. Cap and trade is rejected so it's gonna regulate the carbon emissions again through executive action.

And in this case it's even worse in the case of immigration because it's arbitrary. If you leave it at the discretion of a prosecutor, instead of having the rule of law where it applies to everybody, you can have a prosecutor here and there who will decide well this guy will get in and this guy will not entirely arbitrarily. It's corrupting and it's lawless. That is not the way you run a democracy.