By Gabriel Manor

Today is the big day the progressive media is in full spin to mitigate the anger Americans are expressing about president Obamas decision to offer legal status to millions of people who broke the law. That spin has taken many forms, including the novel arguments that the executive branch is empowered to act whenever legislative branch declines and that the executive branch's enforcement discretion includes the affirmative grant of benefits not otherwise authorized by law. Most recently, however, Progressive columnists have settled on an old favorite tactic: justify Democratic misbehavior by claiming ( falsely, as you will see )that a Republican did it first.

Democrats across print, web, and cable media have been repeating the claim that Obama is doing nothing more than what President Reagan and Bush 41 did first. They point to executive actions taken in 1987 and 1989 that deferred the removal of certain aliens. But as usual for Progressive commentators, they elide the crucial facts that distinguish those actions from Obama's. The sign that you're being swindled isn't so much what the con artist tells you, but what he does not tell you. What Progressive commentariat is not telling you is that Reagan and Bush immigration orders looed nothing like Obama's creation of a new, open ended form of immigration relief.

legally, illegal immigration is dealt with in two steps. First the department of homeland security DHS, ( in Reagan's time the INS) has to show that an alien is removable ( deportable in Reagan and Bush 41's lingo ) from the United States. Then the alien gets a chance to show they are eligible for some form of relief from removal or deportation. Ordinarily, those forms of relief are created by the Congress. There is asylum and adjustment and cancellation of removal, and so on and so forth, all set down in statute by Congress over the decades (more than a century in the case of certain waivers) in an overlapping mess of eligibilities and disqualifiers and discretionary decisions.

With some regularity, however, the existing forms of immigration relief have been overtaken by circumstances. When that has happened, Congress steps in. In 1986, faced with a large and growing population of illegal aliens, Congress created a new, time limited form of immigration relief for certain aliens who, among other things, HAD TO HAVE COME TO THE UNITED STATES MORE THAN SIX YEARS PREVIOUSLY. ( key point ). This is the much ballyhooed Reagan amnesty. It was unfortunately, riddled with fraud in its execution, the uncovering of which is still roiling the immigrant community. But setting that aside it left President Reagan with a moral dilemma. Congress' amnesty was large-just shy of 3 million people-and it had the unanticipated effect of splitting up freshly-legalized PARENTS FROM THEIR ILLEGALLY-PRESENT MINOR CHILDREN WHO DID NOT QUALIFY FOR RELIEF. ( Because they hadn't been in the United States since 1982 as the law required, SO REAGAN FIXED IT my point not the writers.)

So Reagan, seeing this family unity problem that Congress had not anticipated or addressed when it granted amnesty to millions of parents, issued an Executive Order to defer the removal of children of the people who had applied for immigration amnesty under Congress' new law. He allowed those children to remain in the United States while their parents applications for amnesty were pending. A few years later, Bush 41 extended this bit of administrative grace to these same children plus certain souses of the aliens who had actually been granted immigration amnesty Congress' new law.

Congress, though it had desired to grant amnesty, had not considered and not included the spouses and children. Importantly, nor had it excluded them. So President Reagan and Bush 41 filled that statutory gap. " What do we do with spouses and children ?' INS asked. "Well", the executive branch leaders said, "defer their deportation. Decline to exercise your lawful authority for the particular cases that are related to those Congress has offered amnesty."

These Reagan and Bush 41 executive actions were obviously different than what Obama is doing now. They were trying to implement a complicated amnesty that Congress had already passed. Congress' action was a form of immigration relief that obviously fit within our constitutional system. Moreover, Congress left a gap when it came to immediate family members, including minor children, of individuals who qualified for amnesty. President Reagan and Bush 41 forbore from deporting people in that select group.

Obama, in contrast to Reagan and Bush 41, is not tying to implement a lawfully created amnesty. There has been no congressional amnesty. In fact, there has been no immigration action from Congress in the past few years except the post-9/11 REAL ID Act of 2005, which made it harder, not easier, for aliens to qualify for immigration relief. More than that, Congress declined to pass a legalization of the type Obama is issuing during both Obama's term and in a hotly-contested bill during Bush's 43's term.

Thus, Obama is clearly contravening both ordinary practice and the wishes of Congress-as expressed in statute-by declaring amnesty himself. This is NOTHING LIKE REAGAN'S AND BUSH 41'S attempts to implement Congress' amnesty. The Progressive media's claims otherwise are BLATANT LIES, relying on their readers' ignorance of events in the late 1980's and early 1990's. Such attempts should be rejected wherever they are found.

If Obama wants to justify his lawless immigration action, he will have to do it some other way than citing (blaming, more like) prior Republican presidents. They, to their credit, were trying to implement Congress' will. Obama on the other hand, has declared that his government will act despite Congress, or, I suspect, to spite Congress. Such pettiness finds no support in the presidencies of Reagan and Bush 41.

Gabriel Malor is an attorney and writer in Washington DC.

It is very evident, this president has acted unlawfully, and his and the liberal medias attempt to liken his actions to Reagan and Bush 41 is a joke, this article lays out the blatant falsehood that both the media and Obama are pushing. This is akin to the Obamacare bait and switch tactics used by this administration, liberals, and the media, one if which was Mr. Gruber.

I transcribed the whole article because this is very important. I defy one liberal to say Obama was acting as Reagan and Bush 41 did. I will now transcribe a section of the 1986 law.

Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986.

( Key Provision )

Legalized illegal immigrants who entered the United States BEFORE JANUARY 1, 1982 AND HAD RESIDED THERE CONTINUOUSLY ( No current illegal alien can fit into this description, nor does any of Reagan or Bush 41's dilemma exist as pertaining to splitting up families of 1982 ALIENS WHO WERE AMNESTIED )with the penalty of a fine, back taxes due, and admission of guilt; candidates were required to prove that they were not guilty of crimes, that they were IN THE COUNTRY BEFORE JANUARY 1, 1982, and that they possessed minimal knowledge about U.S. history, government, and the ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

So, Reagan and Bush 41 were both reacting to flaws in the Congress' legislation that would have split families up, seeing as the kids that were born after January 1, 1982 couldn't by law become citizens of the United States.

No doubt the reason Congress set an arbitrary date was to keep floods of illegal aliens from pouring into the country to get amnesty, as currently has been happening, but this 1982 language would have split families apart, hence Reagan and Bush 41 acted upon a FLAW.