United States President Barack Obama made an executive decree to grant amnesty for 4.7 million illegal immigrants on Thursday night. In doing so, he broke the trust of immigrants trying to enter America legally, and effectively encouraged more illegal immigration. He also broke the law.

This executive action became the latest and one of the most significant in a series of actions the president has taken that break the Constitution’s restraints on his presidential powers. And in this case, it also blatantly contravened his own repeatedly stated admission that such a move would be unlawful.

Watch the video below of the president’s prior statements on this subject. A year ago, for example, during a speech about immigration, he told a crowd, “[I]f, in fact, I could solve all these problems without passing laws in Congress, then I would do so. But we’re also a nation of laws.” To those who pressed him to take unilateral action on immigration, the president said, “That’s not how our system works. That’s not how our democracy functions. That’s not how our Constitution is written.”

Yet now the administration has discovered new legal justification for such action. (It says the Department of Homeland Security only has resources to deport 400,000 illegal immigrants a year; thus, Obama has “prosecutorial discretion” to decide who among America’s 11 million illegals they will be.) Not only does the administration now deny that its amnesty action is unlawful, but it also now ridicules those who disagree; those who say, “That’s not how our Constitution is written.”

The Washington Post (hardly a conservative paper) published an editorial saying that the president is “tear[ing] up the Constitution.” White House adviser Jennifer Palmieri derisively dismissed that statement, which you can see in the video below.

Palmieri said, “After two years, there’s just no credible reason to continue to ask these people to wait.” There is “no credible reason,” that is, not to take immediate, unilateral executive action to resolve the status of these people who entered the U.S. illegally. To this administration, not even waiting for Congress to pass a law (which is “how our system works” and “how our democracy functions,” in the president’s words) making such action legal would constitute a “credible reason.” So who determines what is “credible”? Not the Constitution—the president.

Immigration is a serious and complicated issue. There are persuasive arguments for the order the president made, and many people expressed joy and gratitude at seeing it enacted. The point is, American government is founded on the rule of law and a constitutional process by which such debate gets aired en route to the formation of public policy. In this case, it is through Congress, America’s lawmaking body.

But the president is reversing his prior position because, he says, he considers this an emergency. In his Thursday night address he argued that because the nation’s immigration system is “broken,” and because Congress hasn’t passed a law yet, he must act alone. In other words, America’s democratic system is not working, and thus, nondemocratic intervention must be taken.

But this is hardly the only such “emergency” the president has encountered that necessitates unilateral executive action. When Congress did not pass cap-and-trade, the president instead gave the power to enforce this unpassed law to the Environmental Protection Agency, which is under his executive control. When Congress did not pass gun control, the president signed 23 executive orders. He took similar steps in order to pass health-care reform, one of the most sweeping laws in American history. He abandoned the Defense of Marriage Act by simply ordering the executive branch to stop enforcing it. In order to sidestep needing congressional approval for a controversial executive appointment, he declared that Congress was in recess. He bypassed the legislature in order to join the nato mission in Libya. He applied a decade-old war power to justify military action in Syria without legislative approval.

He always finds justification to do what he wants. Thursday night, President Obama invoked the authority of a higher law than that of the Constitution. He quoted the law of Moses—which says, “[T]hou shalt not oppress a stranger: for ye know the heart of a stranger, seeing ye were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Exodus 23:9).

But just as he is doing with the Constitution, the president is applying this law in a highly selective way—not to govern or even to inform his decision, but merely to rationalize it once he has made it.

It is true that America is a nation of immigrants. So was Israel anciently, to whom God gave the law that President Obama cited. Most interesting is the fact that America is actually descended from the tribe of Manasseh of ancient Israel. “Israel … always did absorb Gentiles, who became Israelites through living in Israel’s land and intermarrying,” Herbert W. Armstrong wrote in Mystery of the Ages. “The U.S. has become known as the ‘melting pot’ of the world. Instead of refuting a Manasseh ancestry, this fact actually confirms it.”

God permitted foreigners to immigrate to Israel, and even commanded that His people treat them well, as the president noted. However, the same God who passed that law said that those who immigrated were expected to follow the laws of Israel.

If the president wants to use the Bible in order to establish immigration policy, he would do well to refer to Leviticus 24:22, which states, “You shall have the same law for the stranger and for one from your own country; for I am the Lord your God” (New King James Version). And Numbers 15:16: “One law and one manner shall be for you, and for the stranger that sojourneth with you.” This law prohibits giving special treatment to foreigners. Only those who abide by the law of the land—not who disobey it by their very presence—should be permitted to stay.

Notice another law regarding immigration in Israel, just a few verses down from the one the president quoted. After telling His people not to make covenants with people from surrounding nations, God said, “They shall not dwell in thy land, lest they make thee sin against me: for if thou serve their gods, it will surely be a snare unto thee” (Exodus 23:33). In other words, God forbade immigration of anyone who wouldn’t accept the religion of the Israelites.

It is disingenuous to cite only the provision commanding kindness to immigrants without acknowledging the fact that, by law, these immigrants would have to integrate themselves culturally and even religiously.

President Obama apparently recognizes the wisdom in one of the provisions with that ancient law. But whether or not people realize it, America is suffering a number of problems and curses because it has ignored the other provisions on the subject. Our nation’s dangerous and deepening racial and cultural divisions are proof.

That Old Testament law contains a prophecy of what would happen when we disobeyed it. Deuteronomy 28:43-44 reads, “The stranger that is within thee shall get up above thee very high; and thou shalt come down very low. He shall lend to thee, and thou shalt not lend to him: he shall be the head, and thou shalt be the tail.” As the president invites illegal immigrants to remain in the United States—and at the same time encourages still more illegals to join them—we can see this prophecy being fulfilled.

To learn more about the effects of a borderless America, read “Borderline Breakdown.”