IRLI Files Supreme Court Brief Challenging Obama Administration’s Executive Amnesty Appeal

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December 17, 2015

Returning authority over our immigration policy to Congress

December 17, 2015

(Washington, D.C.) – The Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) has filed a friend-of-the-court brief (attached here) in the 26-state challenge of the President’s 2014 executive actions granting amnesty to an estimated 4.5 million illegal aliens. In the case of Texas v. US (Civil Action No. 15-674), the Obama Administration has asked the Supreme Court to review the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeal’s recent decision upholding a district court’s preliminary injunction halting the President’s unlawful amnesty programs until a full trial can take place. IRLI has filed the brief on behalf of two interested clients: Save Jobs USA, an association representing American computer professionals, and the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers, Local 37083 of the Communication Workers of America (Washtech), a union representing American technology workers.

In their brief filed today, IRLI argued against the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) purported authority to grant work permits to any alien of its choosing in violation of the Immigration and Nationality Act; however, it has done so in support of neither party. IRLI instead requests that the Supreme Court deny the federal government’s petition out of a sense of caution and, in turn, wait for a petition from the other more procedurally advanced cases dealing with the same work authorization issue currently pending in federal courts. IRLI clients Save Jobs USA and Washtech, for instance, each have federal cases involving the same DHS overreach, but both are farther along the procedural path—the former case having been submitted for final judgment and the latter case currently on appeal from a final judgment. The Texas multi-state case, by contrast, is merely an appeal from an order granting a preliminary injunction. Importantly, DHS failed to notify the Court of these other pending cases addressing the same issue.

Dale L. Wilcox, IRLI’s Executive Director, commented, “We have asked that the Justices of the Supreme Court to not prejudice our American worker clients by rushing to consider the work authorization issue on the minimal record and analysis of the Fifth Circuit. We would rather see the Court address this important issue on a fully developed and complete record as exists in our pending cases. Wilcox continued, “The stakes could not be any higher. A reversal of the Fifth Circuit and summary affirmation by the Supreme Court on such a scant record of DHS’s alleged sweeping authority to grant work permits to any alien of its choosing, whether in this country lawfully or unlawfully, would enable DHS to completely dismantle American worker protections that have been entrenched in law by our congressional representatives for over 6 decades.”

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