AFP, Washington :Republican reaction was swift and savage Thursday to President Barack Obama’s unilateral plan to bring millions of undocumented non-citizens out of the shadows and make them eligible for work permits.”That’s just not how our democracy works,” House Speaker John Boehner said in a statement released minutes after the White House unveiled details of Obama’s plan, which lifts the threat of deportation for up to five million people living in the shadows.”The president has said before that ‘he’s not king’ and he’s ‘not an emperor,’ but he’s sure acting like one.”Republicans, many of whom hammer as “amnesty” any plan to legalize non-citizens who broke the law to get to the United States, have spent weeks considering ways they might be able to block Obama’s executive order.”I will try to defund the effort for him to go it alone,” warned Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican who helped craft landmark immigration reform legislation last year that passed the Senate but failed in the Republican-run House of Representatives.”We will challenge him in court.”Senator Rand Paul, a favorite of the Tea Party movement that widely opposes Obama’s immigration action, called on the House to pass a resolution condemning the plan as illegal, a move that could pave the way for a court challenge.Congress must soon debate and pass spending legislation that funds government in 2015, and conservatives are eyeing the must-pass bills as potential leverage against the immigration order.Several have argued for defunding the federal agencies responsible for issuing temporary work permits.But the House Appropriations Committee, which oversees the budget process, indicated that such action would be impossible, because the main agency tasked with implementing Obama’s plan is self-funded through immigration application fees and not through the budget approved by Congress.While most Democrats are thought to support the president, he received criticism from his own ranks.”Congress must work with the president to debate the issues and vote to secure our borders, create a tough legalization process, and ensure employers don’t hire illegal immigrants,” Senator Joe Manchin said.Manchin opposed Obama’s unilateral step, but said he also disagreed with the House’s decision not to vote on the bipartisan reform bill that passed the Senate in June 2013.Meanwhile, a senior House Republican said Thursday that it’s impossible to “defund” President Barack Obama’s upcoming moves on immigration in an upcoming spending bill.Appropriations Committee Chairman Harold Rogers, R-Ky., said the Citizenship and Immigration Services agency gets its money through application fees, so Congress can’t stop it by withholding funding in a spending bill.A temporary government funding bill expires next month, and some conservative Republicans want to use a must-pass spending bill to block Obama on immigration. They argue that Republicans should consider every option, including using Congress’ power of the purse, to stop Obama’s upcoming executive order that would effectively permit almost 5 million undocumented immigrants to remain in the country.A similar effort last year to block a part of the national health care law led to a 16-day government shutdown.”The agency has the ability to continue to collect and use fees to continue current operations, and to expand operations as under a new executive order, without needing legislative approval,” said Jennifer Hing, a spokeswoman for Rogers.Next month’s spending bill could still carry legislative language unrelated to funding the immigration agency that’s designed to thwart Obama on immigration. Last year, for instance, House Republicans linked a short-term spending bill to legislation requiring a one-year delay in the requirement that everyone buy health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. The result was a lapse in funding that shuttered nonessential federal agencies.
