How foolish to believe that the president of the United States has the authority to declare amnesty to illegal aliens. Nowhere in the US Constitution does it delegate authority to the federal government on the issue of immigration, legal or illegal. The framers of the Constitution reserved this power to the several States per the 10th Amendment which declares verbatim: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
Let’s break this down. Nowhere in the Constitution does it mention immigration and certainly nowhere in the legislative, executive, or judicial powers delegated in Articles I, II, or III. Also, nowhere in Article I, Section 10 does it enumerate immigration as prohibited to the States. Simply stated, the power to legislate on the issue of immigration was not delegated to the federal government by the several States, so therefore, it is reserved to the States to decide.
The federal government has assumed bogus authority on immigration and thus has usurped power from the States per Amendment 10 in the Bill of Rights. The Father of the Constitution, James Madison, explained this amendment in his Federalist #45 and he states: “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.”
Article VI plainly states that “this Constitution shall be the supreme Law of the Land,” meaning that no one person or entity is above this document, including the president of the United States. The only executive powers the president has are enumerated in Article II and absolutely none of them can circumvent the Constitution, which would in fact place him above the supreme law of the land.
The States created the federal government when they individually ratified the US Constitution and this document is what created the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of the federal government. How ludicrous to believe that they created an entity to have total dominion over them and especially an entity whose powers are supposed to be “few and defined.” Until three fourths of the several States amend the Constitution and delegate power to the federal government on the issue of immigration, this power is still reserved to the States. I truly hope the newly elected representatives on the federal and State level take their oaths to the Constitution seriously and begin to abide by the “supreme Law of the Land.”
Loy Mauch
The Anti-Federalist 