Question for the house

[BT]

Does the President have the constitutional power to grant a pardon to a class of people, say illegal immigrants?

[Christians4LessGvt]

Does the President have the constitutional power to grant a pardon to a class of people, say illegal immigrants?

I am not a lawyer, but I would assume to receive a pardon one would need to have been charged with a crime or an offence.
Since the vast majority of illegals have never been charged with any crime or offence a pardon would not seem likely to apply.
And even if it did, it would be meaningless in any prcatical sense because for the most part none of them are being arrested simply for being an illegal. So what would a pardon do for them? Keep them from being arrested when they aren't being arrested anyway? A pardon would not equate to citizenship.

[sirs]

Constitutionally, no.  If he wants to stand there and provide 1 pardon for every 1 illegal immigrant, yes, that he can constitionally perform.  But a blanket pardon, no

[Plane]

  That seems iffy.

   But wasn't the emancipation proclimation an executive order ?

    At the time of the proclimation there was no constitutional support for an ending of slavery.

    The proclimation at first only freed the slaves that were in rebellious states, of course that is where most of them were.

    So it was not universal , it freed a class of persons from ownership, with a geographical limit.

   The emancipation procllamation is iffy constitutionally , but because its effects were found to be so positive , this gets forgiven and forgotten.

[Plane]

Haven't deserters been forgiven as a class?

I think President Carter did that.

Was it challenged ?

[BT]

Don't know if they were deserters or draft dodgers but that was the direction of my thinking that it might be possible. When Nixon was pardoned, he had not been charged with any crimes. And as far as i know, the pardon power of the president is pretty absolute, constitutionally speaking.

[Plane]

I hope this doesn't happen a lot.

Such a thing usurps the Congress, it should not be necessacery for the Executive to be the legislature.

[Xavier_Onassis]

I don't think the Emancipation Proclamation was legal. It never reached the courts. He freed all the slaves in the parts of the country that were in rebellion. In other words, he freed slaves who lived in the parts of the Confederacy still controlled by the Confederate government. It was a fairly empty proclamation, but it did serve to announce that if the North won, slavery was finished.

I think that Carter simply told the Selective Service not to prosecute those who had left the country if they returned. I donlt think it was really a pardon.