“We are at a dangerous moment. Professor Jonathan Turley described it as a ‘constitutional tipping point.’ For the Senate to approve this nomination would bring us another step closer to the point’s edge.”
Senator Jeff Sessions
Sessions.Senate.Gov
1/28/2015
WASHINGTON—U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Chairman of the Senate Immigration Subcommittee, issued thefollowing statement after the conclusion of today’s Judiciary hearing to announce that he would vote against the nomination of Loretta Lynch to be the next Attorney General:
“President Obama’s executive amnesty represents one of the most breathtaking exertions of executive power in the history of this country. After Congress rejected the President’s favored immigration legislation, the White House met with the interest groups who had crafted that bill and implemented the major provisions of the legislation that Congress had rejected through executive fiat.
The legal opinion attempting to justify this circumvention of Congress was issued by the Attorney General’s Office of Legal Counsel. At the outset of this nomination process, I said that no Senator should vote to confirm anyone for this position—the top law enforcement job in America—who supported the President’s unlawful actions. Congress must defend its constitutional role, which is clearly threatened.
Unfortunately, when asked today whether she found the President’s actions to be ‘legal and constitutional,’ Ms. Lynch said that she did. I therefore am unable to support her nomination.
My concerns are furthered by Ms. Lynch’s unambiguous declaration that ‘the right and the obligation to work is one that’s shared by everyone in this country regardless of how they came here. And certainly, if someone is here, regardless of status, I would prefer that they would be participating in the workplace than not participating in the workplace.’
Such a notion of civil rights, as Civil Rights Commission Member Peter Kirsanow articulated, is ‘incoherent and ahistorical.’ Essential to civil rights is the equal and uniform application of the laws. When the President capriciously suspends those laws and provides benefits to people here unlawfully, he injures the rights of lawful workers—denying them the protections Congress passed to secure their jobs and wages.
We are at a dangerous moment. Professor Jonathan Turley described it as a ‘constitutional tipping point.’ For the Senate to approve this nomination would bring us another step closer to the point’s edge.”
[Note: Click here to see Ms. Lynch’s declaration that unlawful immigrants have a right to work in the United States; the President’s November 20th amnesty decree would confer 5 million unlawful immigrants with work authorization and myriad federal benefits.]
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