Obama’s executive action signals America’s demise

America is a multicultural nation of immigrants. We are also a nation founded on law. President Obama’s move to grant amnesty to millions of illegals – without congressional approval - repudiates every tradition we hold dear.

Waiting until after November’s midterm elections, in which the Democrats lost control of the Senate, Obama apparently decided that he would not spend the next two years as a powerless, quacking, lame duck leader.

Ignoring Congress, and by extension the American people, Obama unilaterally decreed what he thought would best benefit this mockery of a democracy. On Friday, aboard Air Force One - apparently in an effort to invoke the lofty imagery of the immortal gods - Obama signed an executive action that grants amnesty to about five million illegal immigrants now living across the country.

Yes, come right in, there’s plenty of room, we’ll have ourselves a ball! Jobs and refreshments for everyone!

Genevieve Wood, a policy expert at The Heritage Foundation, warned that Obama’s actions mirrored those of a king.

“Obama says he is not a “king,” but he acted exactly like one in going forward with this executive action,” Wood wrote in the Daily Signal. “Despite what Obama says, this was not interpreting a law passed by Congress but creating a law Congress had refused to pass.

Wood then took to fiery language one would expect to find around the time of America’s Revolutionary War against the British Crown.

“In America, we the people are not subjects. We are citizens. We the people are calling on Congress to stand up to, not bow down to, a president who thinks he’s a king.”

Republican Senator Ted Cruz also invoked warnings of an “imperial presidency” when he wrote in Politico Magazine, “When the president embraces the tactics of a monarch, it becomes incumbent on Congress to wield the constitutional power, it has to stop it.”

Is this lecturing from the other 50 percent of America’s limited franchise based on legitimate concerns, or are the Republicans merely throwing a hypocritical hissy fit because they are not the ones occupying the throne on Pennsylvania Avenue?

At the same time, do Americans really have any legitimate right to complain about Obama’s “overstretch” of executive powers? Consider the last decade of wars that the Bush and Obama administrations have launched without a hint of congressional authorization. Did George W. Bush wait for congressional authority before he launched a military invasion against the sovereign state of Iraq for no good reason? Nope. Did Obama wait to hear from “We the People,” or “Congress Incorporated” before taking aggressive action against the sovereign state of Libya, as well as six other fated states, including the ongoing bombardment of Syria, said to be aimed at the Islamic State? Nope.

Let’s be honest: The only reason those decisions did not stir up much domestic handwringing was because the fallout did not directly land in our living rooms. The bombs were – and are – falling on faraway places on men, women and children. A million untold tragedies we’ll never know about. So we went back to our usual routine without considering that one day an imperial decree of a different sort would allow a wave of immigrants flooding into America with very low prospects for both themselves, as well as the Americans who have been here for years, and are now struggling with the vestiges of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. And now that the subject of presidential overstretch has become personal we are suddenly foot-stomping mad.

Whatever the case may be, the issue is certainly a monumental one, which threatens to change the face of America in more ways than one. These illegal immigrants from south of the border – many of them children, some of them sick, all of them poor - are being transported to destinations around the United States where they are provided government assistance, a roof over their heads and medical care. That’s not a plan, that’s just insane. No other government in the world would tolerate such madness.

Like other modern democracies, the United States has a Department of Immigration and Naturalization Service that manages an integrated system of visa and work permits, paid for by the taxpayers. Would it be asking too much for the border patrol to round up these individuals and usher them to the back of the line where they belong? Or is it really a wise policy to set an example to millions of other would-be fence-jumpers by rolling out the red carpet to those who make it across the Rio Grande into American territory?

This brings up another question: What happened to America’s border? How did it become so porous, to the point that young children are able to make it across? Where are the drones, the Humvees, the night-vision technologies, the snapping German Shepherds? Did they all stay back in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay? The United States has some of the most inescapable prison systems in the world, yet we cannot build a viable fence to keep out children along our southern border?

Meanwhile, we are spending billions of dollars on overseas military adventures making enemies and fighting terrorists. But if we left the back door to America wide open, then what good will any of our overseas exploits amount to if the terrorists can simply stroll into North America from South America? And while we are on the subject, natural-born Americans themselves are daily harassed, interrogated, sometimes even groped, just to board an aircraft. Yet people arriving illegally in the country are given the VIP frequent flier treatment.

Obama’s executive action has even forced me to agree with some political commentators I normally find repulsive in their views. Charles Krauthammer, for example, called Obama’s move a “gigantic neon sign” at the Mexican border.

“This executive action is a gigantic neon sign on the Rio Grande saying to Central Americans and to other people around the world ‘If you wait in line and apply for legal immigration you’re a sap’,” Krauthammer said in an interview with Fox News. “You come here illegally, you have two children, and eventually you will be legalized.”

“I would not oppose this if we were going to be serious about shutting the border…This is an invitation to a mass migration.”

On this one occasion, I would go one step further than the irascible Krauthammer. Obama’s reckless executive action on immigration is not just an invitation for mass migration. It’s an invitation to the mass extinction of the American Dream.

Robert Bridge is the author of the book, Midnight in the American Empire, which examines the destructive consequences of extreme corporate power in the United States.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.