E-Newsletter

Congressman Morgan Griffith (R-VA) today issued the following statement after voting in favor of the Fiscal Year 2015 Department of Homeland Security (DHS) appropriations bill (H.R. 240) and amendments to defund President Obama’s executive action on immigration:

“The debate about defunding President Obama’s executive action is not exclusively a debate about immigration.  It primarily is a debate about whether or not the President has the authority to enact laws without Congress.”

“The President should be defending America’s borders and enforcing our laws.  I question the President’s authority to make blanket decisions regarding the prosecution of criminal laws, as opposed to making decisions in a specific individual’s case.”

“This legislation prevents any funds from being used to carry out the President’s recent executive actions and his 2011 and 2012 memos on prosecutorial discretion and immigration law enforcement priorities.  The bill denies funding for any substantially similar future policy and blocks the use of funds to grant any federal benefit to any unlawful immigrant as a result of the defunded policies.  It also prohibits any federal agency from using federal funds to consider any applications under the President’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.  DACA allows individuals brought to the United States as children and meeting other criteria to be considered for deferred action, subject to renewal.”

“Clearly, our immigration system is not working for the United States and is not working for immigrants trying to legally come here.  I am proud to support this bill and amendments defunding the President’s unlawful actions, protecting the rights of legal immigrants, facilitating the removal of aliens convicted of serious crimes, and reiterating the House’s strong commitment to policies that support citizen workers and legal immigrant workers.”

BACKGROUND:

On November 20, 2014, President Obama announced a series of unilateral executive actions that fundamentally change U.S. immigration policy.  At the end of the 113^th Congress, the House passed a combination continuing resolution and partial omnibus, referred to as a “cromnibus.” While Griffith did not vote for the cromnibus, H.R. 83 fully funds the federal government for the remainder of the fiscal year, which ends on September 30, 2015, with the exception of DHS.  DHS is responsible for immigration enforcement, and has stated that there are a total of nearly 11 million illegal aliens residing in the United States.  DHS was only funded in the cromnibus until February 27, 2015, in order to give the then-incoming House and Senate an opportunity to address funding for the President’s executive actions on immigration.

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