OPINION:
With one quick flick of the writing hand wrist, President Donald Trump could very well put an end to one of America’s most contentious, most divisive immigration practices — anchor babies.
Well, well, well, it’s like the era of Barack Obama coming to bite Democrats in the butt, now isn’t it?
In a phrase: pen and phone president.
“We’re not just going to be waiting for legislation in order to make sure that we’re providing Americans the kind of help they need,” Obama said in January 2014 about his desperate attempt to revive the economy.
He didn’t describe it as desperate, of course. He described it as due to the failure of Congress to act. And on that score, he described himself as the superman who would save.
“I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a phone,” Obama said then, CBS reported. “And I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive actions and administrative actions that move the ball forward in helping to make sure our kids are getting the best education possible, making sure that our businesses are getting the kind of support and help they need to grow and advance, to make sure that people are getting the skills that they need to get those jobs that our businesses are creating.”
How noble, how very, very noble.
And now, as a hat tip to that very nobility, President Donald Trump is taking a page out of that same pen and cellphone playbook and creating his own executive order to help the good people of America — the good citizens of America — avoid the pitfalls and perils of anchor babydom.
“We’re the only country in the world where a person comes in and has a baby and the baby is essentially a citizen of the United States … with all of those benefits,” Trump reportedly said, in an interview with Axios. “It’s ridiculous. It’s ridiculous. And it has to end.”
And voila, like that, with a simple stroke of the pen, it very well could end. Apparently — and this will come as a gasping surprise to the left, no doubt — Obama’s pen works for Trump, as well.
“It’s in the process,” Trump was cited by Axios as saying. “It’ll happen … with an executive order.”
This is such a delicious moment in time to be a conservative.
One of the previous administration’s most-used tool of political warfare was the executive order. It was Obama’s go-to when Congress wouldn’t act — when even a Democrat-controlled Congress refused to act.
Republicans often fought, conservatives frequently railed. But Obama, unconcerned with the Constitution, enamored with his own socialist-style vision, shrugged.
“I’ve got a pen,” he’d say. “I’ve got a phone.”
Well, now, here we are in 2018 and Trump, it appears, has got that pen. Trump, it seems, is in possession of that phone. My, how the pendulum swings away, doesn’t it? So thank you, Obama — thank you, Democrats. Trump’s been well-schooled in how to use these tools of executive governing.
And like that, anchor babies be gone.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter @ckchumley.
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