Two days after Senate win, Lankford warns Obama on immigration

Rep. James Lankford (R-Okla.), his state’s senator-elect, early Thursday cautioned President Obama against issuing an executive order on immigration, which Lankford believes would create more problems than it solves.

{mosads}“The president, whether you’re George Washington or whether you’re Barack Obama, can’t just decide, ‘I’m going to do something and not go through Congress,’ ” he said on MSNBC. “Congress should step up and say we have a constitutional responsibility.”

The administration has teased future executive action to deal with the more than 11 million immigrants living in the U.S. illegally. The White House portrays the action as necessary because the House hasn’t touched a bipartisan Senate immigration bill.

But Lankford compared the potential move to the president’s last executive order on immigration, which deferred deportation for certain children who were brought to the country illegally. He believes that decision helped spur a massive amount of illegal migration to the U.S.

“The deferred action … actually led to the rapid move of a lot of these juveniles coming across the border last summer. We saw the acceleration,” he said.

“The coyotes and everyone took advantage of that and said now is the time to be able to come to the United States and it spurred that. There’s no question an executive action would do that again.”

The administration has countered that the president’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals order didn’t lead to any influx of illegal immigrants and has placed the blame on the instability in Central American countries.