November 13, 2015
CapitalPress.com
Appeals court rules
against Obama
immigration plan
Group alleges Obama plans
to circumvent court order
case unfolds, it could
go back to the Tex-
as federal court for
more proceedings.
The
National
Immigration
Law
Center, an advoca-
By KEVIN MCGILL
Obama
cy group, urged an
Associated Press
immediate Supreme
NEW ORLEANS — President Court appeal.
Barack Obama’s plan to defer de-
“The most directly impact-
portation of an estimated 5 mil- ed are the 5 million U.S. citizen
lion people living in the United children whose parents would be
States illegally suffered another eligible for temporary relief from
setback Monday in a ruling from deportation,” Marielena Hincapie,
a New Orleans-based federal ap- executive director of the organiza-
peals court.
tion, said in a news release.
In a 2-1 decision, the 5th U.S.
Part of the initiative included
Circuit Court of Appeals upheld expansion of a program called
a Texas-based federal judge’s in- Deferred Action for Childhood
junction blocking the administra- Arrivals, protecting young immi-
tion’s immigration initiative.
grants from deportation if they
It’s unclear when the Justice were brought to the U.S. illegally
'HSDUWPHQWZLOO¿OHLWVDSSHDORU as children. The other major part,
whether the high court would take Deferred Action for Parents of
up the case, but the administration Americans, would extend deporta-
may be running out of time to get tion protections to parents of U.S.
D ¿QDO GHFLVLRQ EHIRUH 2EDPD citizens and permanent residents
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who have been in the country for
The Obama administration years.
said it would appeal the ruling to
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the Supreme Court.
by Judge Jerry Smith, joined by
Republicans had criticized the Jennifer Walker Elrod, rejected
plan as an illegal executive over- administration arguments that the
reach when Obama announced it district judge abused his discretion
last November. Twenty-six states with a nationwide order and that
challenged the plan in court.
the states lacked standing to chal-
The administration argued that lenge Obama’s executive orders.
the executive branch was within
They acknowledged an argu-
its rights in deciding to defer de- ment that an adverse ruling would
portation of selected groups of GLVFRXUDJH SRWHQWLDO EHQH¿FLD-
immigrants, including children ries of the plan from cooperating
who were brought to the U.S. il- with law enforcement authorities
legally.
or paying taxes. “But those are
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott burdens that Congress knowing-
praised the ruling.
ly created, and it is not our place
“President Obama should to second-guess those decisions,”
abandon his lawless executive am- Smith wrote.
nesty program and start enforcing
In a 53-page dissent, Judge
the law today,” Abbott said in a Carolyn Dineen King said the ad-
news release.
ministration was within the law,
The ruling further dims pros- casting the decision to defer action
pects of implementation of the on some deportations as “quintes-
executive action before Obama sential exercises of prosecutorial
OHDYHV RI¿FH LQ $SSHDOV discretion,” and noting that the
over the injunction could take Department of Homeland Security
months and, depending on how the has limited resources.
A group opposing illegal immigra-
tion suspects the Obama administra-
tion wants to circumvent a court order
prohibiting a federal program that de-
ferred deportations of certain undocu-
mented immigrants.
And the administration will not
comment on the allegation on the re-
cord.
The Immigration Reform Law In-
stitute, an immigration advocacy law
¿UP SRLQWV WR DQ LQWHUQDO GRFXPHQW
apparently leaked from the U.S. De-
partment of Homeland Security, dis-
cussing several options for providing
employment authorization to immi-
grants.
The document analyzes granting
such work authorization to four cat-
egories of people, with the broadest
option including those who have en-
tered the U.S. without inspection or
overstayed their visas.
7KH RSWLRQ IDYRUHG E\ WKH 2I¿FH
of Policy and Strategy — a division
of the Department of Homeland Se-
curity’s immigration arm — would
permit employment authorizations for
people who entered illegally but who
are now lawfully in the country under
programs that defer deportation.
One such program, known as the
Deferred Action for Parents of Amer-
icans and Lawful Permanent Resi-
dent, or DAPA, was established by
WKH 2EDPD DGPLQLVWUDWLRQ LQ
but blocked by a federal judge earlier
this year.
U.S. District Judge Andrew
Hanen found the DAPA program was
created in violation of administrative
procedure law because the federal
government didn’t follow public no-
tice-and-comment requirements.
That ruling was challenged be-
fore the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals, which recently upheld the
injunction.
Ian Smith, an investigative associ-
ate for the Immigration Reform Law
Institute, called the leaked memo
an “incomplete document” that may
foreshadow federal regulations deal-
ing with work authorizations.
“I don’t know exactly what they’re
thinking,” he said of the document’s
authors.
Administration will
ask Supreme Court to
take the case
5
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
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)DUPZRUNHUVSLFNSDSHUWUD\VRIGULHGUDLVLQVRIIWKHJURXQGDQGKHDSWKHPRQWRD
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immigrants.
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referred questions to the Depart-
ment of Homeland Security, which
refused to comment about the docu-
ment or allegations that the admin-
istration is trying to side-step the
injunction.
The White House did not respond
to repeated requests to comment on
the record.
Another Obama administration
program that stopped deportations of
people who unlawfully entered the
U.S. as children, Deferred Action
for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA,
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subject to an injunction, Smith said.
Some of the policy options in the
leaked memo would apply to immi-
grants who are eligible for this pro-
gram, authorizing them to work in
the U.S., he said.
The memo may also signal that
the federal government is aiming to
defer deportations for some immi-
grants through the rulemaking pro-
cess, he said.
While more time-consuming, at-
torneys for the government expect
that following this process would
improve the chances such immigra-
tion policies could survive in court,
Smith said.
Work authorizations for immi-
grants who entered the U.S. illegally
are troubling because they create an
“anchor” that impedes people from
returning to their home countries, he
said.
The option in the leaked memo
that would provide work authoriza-
tion to nearly any immigrant is the
“scariest,” as it would undermine
the principle of a controlled immi-
gration system that does not disrupt
the labor market, Smith said.
The leaked document was made
available on the website of Immigra-
tion Voice, a non-profit group that
advocates for reforming rules that
pertain to high-skilled immigrants.
Capital Press was unable to reach
representatives of the group as of
press time.
Nearly a third of Idaho ag land is rented
81 percent of
state’s landlords
aren’t farmers
By SEAN ELLIS
Capital Press
Sean Ellis/Capital Press
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an awful lot of it is being trans-
fered by farmers to family mem-
bers and it’s a good indication
that a lot of farmers are planning
to retire soon.
“It’s showing that a new gen-
eration of farmers is coming in
and there are a lot of farmers
planning to retire,” said Corey
Coles, a land value expert in
Rabo AgriFinance’s Nampa of-
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sage.”
Shelley farmer Stan Searle
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what a lot of growers probably
already suspect, that a lot of Ida-
ho farmers are on the verge of
retirement.
46-2/#5
acres to different owners in the
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be sold to non-relatives and
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put in trust.
Patrick said those types of
trusts include insurance com-
panies and other large investors
buying farmland for investment
purposes, and they may also in-
clude estates put into trust for
tax purposes.
Patrick and others said that if
DFUHVRIWKDWPLO-
lion acres of farmland expected
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years is going to non-relatives
and trusts, that probably means
46-4/#4
BOISE — Almost 31 per-
cent of farmland in Idaho is
rented and most of the land-
lords who rent that land out are
non-farmers.
A survey conducted by US-
DA’s National Agricultural Sta-
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million acres of farmland in
Idaho was rented out by land-
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last year.
Seventy percent of that
rented farmland was cropland
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Forests and other uses made up
the rest.
University of Idaho Agri-
cultural Economist Garth Tay-
lor said the survey results show
that “farmers are renting an aw-
ful lot of land. They don’t own it
because it’s too expensive. The
reason for that is that they are
farmers, not land speculators.”
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has surveyed farmland landlords
since 1999. The Tenure, Owner-
ship and Transition of Agricul-
tural Land survey was conduct-
ed in cooperation with USDA’s
Economic Research Service.
According to the survey,
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land landlords in Idaho were
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were non-farming entities, in-
cluding partnerships, corpora-
tions, trusts and other types of
ownership.
The large number of
non-farming landlords didn’t
surprise Sen. Jim Patrick, a Re-
publican farmer from Twin Falls
who has been contacted several
times by institutional buyers
seeking agricultural land.
“I know the institutional
buyers are out there and they’ve
bought some pretty large farms
in this area,” he said.
Based on survey results,
farmland landlords in Idaho
expect to transfer 1.99 million