Last Friday, I had my say on Obama’s decision to stop the deportation of young, law-abiding illegal immigrants and allow them to apply for work visas.  So as to make sure we are all clear, here are the people who Obama is targeting with this announcement:

• Came to the United States under the age of 16.
• Have continuously resided in the United States for at least five years preceding the date of the memorandum and are present in the United States on the date of the memorandum.
• Are currently in school, have graduated from high school, have obtained a general education development certificate, or are an honorably discharged veteran of the Coast Guard or Armed Forces of the United States.
• Have not been convicted of a felony offense, a significant misdemeanor offense, multiple misdemeanor offenses, or otherwise poses a threat to national security or public safety.
• Are not above the age of 30.

Why is the Obama administration saying that it felt the need to make this move?  It fits into their campaign strategy of painting Congress as a do-nothing Congress, while Obama is a man of action.  A White House official said that the strategy is the result of a stalemate in Washington.

The real reason?  To get votes in November --- Hispanic votes.  This was Hispandering on a grand scale. 

It’s not the policy that I disagree with here.  Oh, I know .. my listeners and readers want me to echo their feelings that these people should be rounded up and shipped back to Mexico, Equador, Columbia or wherever they came from.  Trouble is, they came from those places as children.  They were brought here.  They had no choice.  “But,” you say, “they were breaking the law.  They’re criminals.  They should be sent back.”    It’s their parents who are the criminals, not the kids.  In order to be adjudicated a criminal you must show criminal intent in illegal actions.  These kids had no criminal intent when they came to America.

Don’t get angry with me quite yet … I still haven’t gotten to Obama’s methodology.  But I do want to say that there are very few of you demanding that these illegals be “punished” and “sent back” who would walk up to an 18-year-old who, as a toddler,  who was illegally brought to this country from Mexico by their parents; who only speaks English, and who has no living relative left in Mexico --- and dump that 18-year-old back across the border with instructions to never come back again. 

Now … Obama’s methodology.  Obama is lawless.  This man has not one ounce of respect for our Constitution or the rule of law.  He’s a ruler, not a leader.  Remember, please, that Valerie Jarrett, the second most powerful person in this country, said of the Obama administration: “We will be ready to rule from day one.”  Well, rulers don’t need laws.  Rulers make laws.  Rulers are, by definition, the law.  That’s why, in 2011, Obama told a townhall that executive action to stop deportation would not be “appropriate” action for the president to take.  He said, “There are enough laws on the books by Congress that are very clear in terms of how we have to enforce our immigration system that for me to simply through executive order ignore those congressional mandates would not conform with my appropriate role as president.” 

Well .. that was then.  This is now.  And now Obama is in campaign mode, and it’s a campaign that he understands he very well may not win.  For someone like Obama, when his rule is threatened the law goes out the window.  Time to play the role of Ruler again – and that means make up the laws as you go along.  So now it is appropriate – though it wasn’t eight months ago – for the president to just decide that the immigrations laws passed by the congress and signed into law by previous presidents just don’t apply any more. They don’t apply because Obama’s reelection dictates that they be set aside for the “new appropriate” policy – one that brings Hispanic voters to the Obama doorstep. 

What does this mean for Mitt Romney?  Clearly, this puts Romney on the spot.  After a few weeks of gaining in the polls, the immigration decision surely took the focus off of the economy and Obama’s multiple failures as president.  So how does Mitt feel about this political move?  (Yes, at the end of the day it is a political move).  On Sunday’s “Face the Nation” with Bob Schieffer, Romney refused to flat-out say that he would repeal the order, as compared to his stance on ObamaCare, which he says he would repeal on Day One.  But then Romney leaped right into his talking points of securing the border and establishing an e-verify system.  Then he says, “With regards to these kids who were brought in by their parents through no fault of their own, there needs to be a long-term solution so they know what their status is. This is something Congress has been working on--and I thought we were about to see some proposals brought forward by Senator Marco Rubio and by Democrat senators--but the president jumped in and said I'm going to take this action, he called it a stop-gap measure. I don't know why he feels stop-gap measures are the right way to go."  In other words, Romney himself doesn’t really have a plan but he was hoping that Congress would act on the issue.  “There needs to be a long-term solution” isn’t exactly an immigration policy to write home about.  Not good.

Romney would have looked a lot better if he had expressed  basic approval of the policy, but that violating the laws of our land is not the way to accomplish this.  How’s this for a Romney statement:

“I agree with the president that illegal residents in the narrow range affected by his actions need our compassion and a break.  Few Americans want to gather them together and send them back to countries and societies they don’t know.  My problem with Obama’s announcement is that he now sees fit to ignore the laws of this country in order to achieve a campaign objective.  Many Hispanics come here to escape lawless societies that lack opportunity.  Now it seems that Obama want’s to promote just that type of society here at home.” 

The reaction from the rest of the GOP has been from one extreme to the other.  As Mitt Romney just mentioned, Marco Rubio has been working on a version of the DREAM Act.  He called Obama’s move “welcome news for many of these kids desperate for an answer, but it is a short term answer to a long term problem."  He says that Obama’s decision to go around Congress will make it more difficult to come to a long-term solution on the issue.

Then we have Republicans like Rep. Steve King who plans to sue the Obama administration over the policy, because he believes that this should be done through the legislative, and not the executive, branch.