The immigration crisis pitting the Obama administration against 26 states may not ease until the country has a Republican president — and even then politicians could still prefer the status quo, former Rep. Ron Paul of Texas told
Newsmax TV on Friday.
"There's two issues: one is what Obama's doing, and the second is how he's doing it," Paul, a libertarian and past Republican presidential candidate, told "MidPoint" host Ed Berliner, referring to President Barack Obama's executive order to start permit paperwork for millions of undocumented immigrants
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That order was stayed by a federal judge in Texas, setting up arguments on Friday in a
federal court in New Orleans between the administration and the states suing to block its actions.
"Of course, I don't like executive orders and the president being an imperial-type president; Congress should be involved," said Paul. "But Congress has been very, very lax."
"I don't know when they'll ever get together on this," he said. "They've been messing around with a lot of problems in this country for a long, long time. They talk about economic problems and foreign policy problems, but from my viewpoint, things don't get better. We keep spending money, getting more involved, and now we have this mess with immigration."
Paul said he supports "a better immigration program" that could be funded by spending less on military interventions and foreign aid.
"I'd like to see the resources come home," he said.
"I'm not opposed to a good work program, but there's inefficiencies at the border and our system encourages illegal immigration mainly because of things like Obama's doing," said Paul. "They get free medical care and free education, so there's a tremendous incentive."
Paul wondered whether the political will exists in either party to change course on immigration, saying, "maybe the desire isn't there."
"So, my prediction is that you're not going to see it resolved very soon," he said. "It'll probably end up with a Republican president here in the next two years, and maybe something will change. But I'm not all that optimistic."
A well-known advocate of smaller government and more individual freedom, Paul returned to some of the libertarian ideas he championed in Congress and campaigned on for president.
Surveying the chaotic Middle East and the conflict raging between Russia and Ukraine, Paul said, as he has before, "It's our presence over there that stirs up problems."
"We're the ones who got rid of an elected leader in Ukraine," he said.
On Iran, he said there is "no evidence since 2003 that the Iranians worked on a nuclear weapon," referring to a controversial U.S.-led attempt to reach a nonproliferation deal with Iran.
Regarding the Islamic State (ISIS), he said, "ISIS is a consequence of our policy in Iraq and Afghanistan, and particularly Syria, and we're on both sides of the Iranians right now. We delivered Iraq to the Iranians, yet in Yemen we're fighting them, but up in Syria we're with them."
He said that hiring or training military surrogates in countries such as Iraq "never has worked."
"So, I would say the consequences are always very, very negative," he said of U.S. military interventions abroad, "and we don't have a moral authority to involve ourselves in the internal affairs in these civil wars."
A vocal foe of the IRS, Paul agreed that abolishing the federal tax collection agency is unlikely so long as people endorse "the current government of warfare and welfare."
He also weighed in on the recent collisions between same-sex marriage and religious freedom laws, saying "the fight shouldn't exist" because government should not be in the business of defining marriage for anybody.
"Two people can decide what they want to call their association," he said. "We shouldn't need licenses; we shouldn't have the government sanction."
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