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Sessions urges Congress to block funds for Obama’s ‘illegal amnesty hiring spree’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9s7PmiIPvEU
(Video above: Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) speaks on the Senate floor urging Congress to block funds for Obama’s “illegal amnesty hiring spree.”)

WASHINGTON — Executive branch agencies are already pushing forward with implementing President Obama’s immigration orders, which circumvented Congress to instantly shield roughly 5 million illegal immigrants from deportation.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) posted 1,000 job openings the day after the president’s announcement, many of which will be housed at a new office location in the Washington, D.C. area. The agency sent out an email earlier this week touting their plans to staff up quickly.

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) obtained the email, which reads as follows:

USCIS is taking steps to open a new operational center in Crystal City, a neighborhood in Arlington, Virginia, to accommodate about 1,000 full-time, permanent federal and contract employees in a variety of positions and grade levels. The initial workload will include cases filed as a result of the executive actions on immigration announced on Nov. 20, 2014. Many job opportunities at the operational center will be announced in the coming days…

Sessions said the immediate job postings — which range in salary from $34,415 to as much as $157,100 per year — are evidence that the Administration had been preparing in advance to rush to implement the order “before the Congress can restrain it or contain it.”

“(President Obama) is hiring federal employees to carry out a directive that violates the laws Congress has passed in order to foist on the nation laws Congress has repeatedly refused to pass,” Sessions said.

On the floor of the Senate Thursday, Sessions reiterated his position that Congress should use its power of the purse to deprive the President of the funding needed to implement what many conservatives view as illegal executive actions.

“Congress has a responsibility and a duty here. Congress should fund no program, should allow no presidential expenditure that is spent on programs it deems are unworthy,” he said. “And it absolutely has a responsibility to ensure that this President spends no money to execute policies that are in violation of existing law.”

Sessions then turned to tweets from former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich to sum up his position that Congress must use the power of the purse to defund the President’s executive order on immigration.

(If Gingrich’s three tweets do not appear below, you can view them here: 1, 2, 3)

A highlight video of Sessions’ remarks on the floor of the Senate Thursday can be viewed above.


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