Why deport when you can extort?

Tampa Bay reporter Dan DeWitt gets some tips on blueberry picking. About 85% of farmworkers nationwide are undocumented; they're paying payroll taxes but they'll never collect Social Security. Photo by Will Vragovic, Tampa Bay Times.

Something I've been confused about in the immigration debate that others may be confused about too, because it hasn't been handled very well by, say, the Times:

Judge Hanen said in his ruling, in a case brought by Texas and 25 other states, that the administration had not followed required procedures for changing federal rules. The judge issued an injunction ordering that the program be halted, and government officials quickly postponed the actions to comply with the order.

Sounds like (sounds like we're playing charades, hahaha) it's so obvious that the executive's prosecutorial discretion permits it to decide who to deport, given that they can't deport all 11-odd million simultaneously or proceed entirely at random, which seems to be what the Republicans want (they think any kind of forethought is treachery), that what Judge Hanen had to do to throw the DAPA and expanded DACA programs out was pin them to some kind of quibble from the arcana of the federal rule books, so exotically bureaucratic that it couldn't even be explained to us, but this is not exactly what happened.

Actually the judge had a kind of case. I don't think it should turn out to be a valid case (IANAL, as ever), but it's there, and it illustrates, in an interesting way, how the conservative thought process tends toward class oppression even when it's wholly unconscious, so as to look more conspiratorial, perhaps, than it in fact is, as we learn from The Legal Intelligencer:

opponents of illegal immigration and of any "path to citizenship" for the undocumented are focused on employment authorization of those granted deferred action. Federal regulations have long recognized that people granted deferral of their removal can be granted work authorization, if they show the economic need to work. By granting work authorization to these unlawfully present individuals, the DAPA program will also allow them to obtain other documentation necessary to live "out of the shadows," including Social Security numbers and driver's licenses. These documents, in turn, allow the undocumented to open bank accounts, pay taxes and receive refundable tax credits if they are low-income, obtain car insurance, and otherwise fully participate in economic life.

That's what the judge is focusing on, the full participation angle:

“The DHS was not given any ‘discretion by law’ to give 4.3 million removable aliens what the DHS itself labels as ‘legal presence,’ ” Judge Hanen wrote in issuing an injunction. “In fact, the law mandates that these illegally-present individuals be removed. The DHS has adopted a new rule that substantially changes both the status and employability of millions. These changes go beyond mere enforcement or even non-enforcement of this nation’s immigration scheme.”

Of course this view doesn't trouble to notice that all sorts of "removable aliens" are already given those work permits, and the social security numbers, driver's licenses, and other necessities. Although the rightwing press just happens to have been freaking out over it—"Millions!" they scream in the headlines, meaning, well, almost one million over a 6-year period, as relayed by excitable Jim Hoft:

More than 5.46 million foreign nationals received work permits from the federal government since 2009, according to a new report from the Center for Immigration Studies. Data uncovered from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency reveal that approximately 982,000 work permits were given to illegal immigrants and other foreign nationals unqualified for admission, most of whom crossed the border without inspection.

But these guys are not the subject of any Texas complaints, presumably because they couldn't blame it on Obama, although of course Hoft, and his sources at the National Review and Powerline are happy to blame it on Obama, having no responsibility to the truth at all. As Adam Serwer notes at Mother Jones, it's been going on for 20 years:

In a series of memos issued after the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Responsibility Act, a law that sought to curtail illegal immigration and prioritize removal of unauthorized immigrants, immigration officials in both the Clinton and Bush administrations established guidelines and limits for when authorities could exercise leniency in dealing with unauthorized immigrants. 

What I particularly wanted to say, though, was about Judge Hanen's logic and its implications: While he acknowledges that the executive has the power to pick and choose who is and isn't going to be deported, he wants to arrogate to the judiciary the power to punish the undeported ones anyway, by preventing them from that "full participation" in the economy. He wants to force them to work illegally, or starve, of course, if they prefer. To drive unlicensed, to not contribute to Social Security, to receive less than minimum wage and be unable to get redress for wage theft. Like, he's happy to let them stay as long as he can keep them in conditions resembling slavery.

And the thing is, I don't think he's explicitly thinking it out that way. It's just how conservatives want things.