Prosecutorial Discretion
I heard and saw all kinds of trash talk from Repubs about how Zero was going to violate all kinds of laws with his executive order on immigration, but all he announced tonight was the enforcement priorities for the Department of Homeland Security regarding undocumented immigrants. Every prosecutor in the US can decide what criminal cases will or won’t be tried, so it defies logic to insist that the head of the Executive Branch of the US government doesn’t have the same power in dealing with government regulations.
Let’s be clear, it is not a crime to enter the country without getting the proper paperwork. There is no such thing as an ‘illegal alien’. Undocumented immigrants aren’t tried for being in the US ‘illegally’, they have a hearing before an administrative law judge for failing to comply with the appropriate rules and regulations. They don’t get attorneys, bail hearings, or any of the other requirements of a criminal trial. They don’t face prison time if the judge rules against them, they are deported. They didn’t break a law, they failed to abide by the rules.
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The tighty righties are all sorts of freaking out, claiming that Obama is giving welfare to illegals with today’s speech and all sorts of nonsense like that. The key paragraph in Obama’s speech is this one:
Now, let’s be clear about what it isn’t. This deal does not apply to anyone who has come to this country recently. It does not apply to anyone who might come to America illegally in the future. It does not grant citizenship, or the right to stay here permanently, or offer the same benefits that citizens receive -– only Congress can do that. All we’re saying is we’re not going to deport you.
One thing you have to say about Obama, he generally says exactly what he’s going to do. Like he specifically said he was going to basically be a banker and health insurer’s best friend when he was running for office, except nobody bothered reading his actual words and instead read their hopes or dreams or fears into what he said. But you parse the words and this is exactly what he said he’s going to do: he’s just going to choose not to deport some people.
Let’s face it, I’m sure that of the millions of pages of laws that are on the law books, you and I have violated at least a half dozen of them at some point or another. Why aren’t we in jail? Simple: they’re laws that cops and prosecutors don’t bother enforcing. Because if they enforced every single one of those laws, they’d have to put *everybody* in jail, including themselves. Prosecutorial discretion is the rule, not the exception. Obama’s critics best be glad that he chooses to exercise it, otherwise they’d all be in jail for violating something.
The biggest reason for Prosecutorial Discretion is money. No one has the budget or resources to make the arrests and hold the trials for all of the laws on the books. I use to annoy people by pointing out what I could arrest them for if I felt like it. I didn’t do it because I didn’t have the money in my budget for the overtime costs of a trial, even if I could convince the district attorney to prosecute. I had higher-ups who thought we needed to make more arrests for drug possession, but they stopped annoying me when I showed them how much it was going to cost them to do it. [I also had the problems of a local judge who felt that most drug charges were a waste of his time if they didn’t involve selling drugs, and the field test kit to prove you had specific drugs was expensive as hell.]
All Zero has to do is mention to the DC cops that they don’t need to give breaks to Congresscritters and all hell would break loose.