Boehner: Obama amnesty fight isn’t about immigration

House Speaker John A. Boehner said Tuesday that moves to block President Obama’s new deportation amnesty are less about immigration than they are about asserting Congress’s right to make laws, and pushing back on a runaway executive branch.

The House is scheduled to begin debating the homeland security spending bill later Tuesday, but the focus will be on a series of amendments the GOP has lined up that would cancel Mr. Obama’s amnesty.

Democrats have accused Republicans of holding anti-immigrant views and say the GOP is flirting with a shutdown of the Homeland Security Department by insisting that funding for its agencies be coupled with the provisions halting the president’s amnesty.

But Mr. Boehner said Republicans want to do both.

“Our goal here is to fund the Department of Homeland Security. Our second goal is to stop the president’s executive overreach,” he said. “This is not the way our government was intended to work. The president said 22 times that he didn’t have the authority to do what he eventually did. He knows the truth here and so do the American people.”

The White House has defended Mr. Obama’s actions as lawful and constitutional, saying that previous presidents have also granted “deferred action” — a suspension of deportations, along with work permits to allow illegal immigrants to compete legally for jobs.

In addition to Congress, Mr. Obama’s policy is also being challenged in the courts, where 25 states have sued arguing they will be harmed by having to issue driver’s licenses, concealed weapons permits and other benefits to illegal immigrants who take advantage of the amnesty.