The President answered many a La Raza prayer on Friday by issuing no-deport passes to illegal alien “children” under 30 (or anyone who has fake documents indicating that age), along with the highly treasured work permits.

Of course it’s amnesty. Authorization to stay and work legally is absolutely an amnesty, because the money is the reason they come. Few individual aliens care about citizenship and voting — those items are desired only by political Raza types to gain more group power.

Furthermore, Obama’s administrative amnesty can also be understood as expanding birth-right citizenship to anyone under 30. Nobody in that age group will be left out, because necessary papers will be forged to include everyone. Raza types have already complained about “second class citizenship” regarding a DREAM Act with work permits only, so they will certainly demand the whole enchilada at some point.

President Obama had said more than once that the American system of government did not allow him to decree amnesty all on his own. He even told a Univision audience in March of last year, “With respect to the notion that I can just suspend deportations through executive order, that’s just not the case, because there are laws on the books that Congress has passed.”

But now, five months before the big election, niceties like the separation of powers take a back seat to hardcore political hispandering. Obama’s party totally controlled government for the first year and a half of his presidency, but didn’t try to pass an amnesty legislatively, as the law requires.

The number cited today for the people affected is 800,000. But when the same cohort has been described in earlier iterations of the DREAM Act, two million has been the number. Either is too many when young citizens currently face a “labor market depression for teens.”

Let’s hope Republicans respond. Rep. Steve King says he will “bring a suit and seek a court order to stop implementation of this policy.” That’s a start, but much more is needed.

As long as the government rewards lawbreaking, immigration chaos will continue.