Obama Plans Backdoor Amnesty

Barack Obama is seeking to bypass the legislative process by way of executive policy. He does face roadblocks, though, in the form of judicial review.

Obama seeks comprehensive immigration reform with amnesty for the 12 million to 30 million foreign nationals currently residing illegally in the United States. Even with recent passage of a Southwest Border Security Law, an outright amnesty bill appears unlikely this election year. Thus, the creative Obama team is devising backdoor amnesty for illegal aliens.

One such plan announced by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) involves the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) that oversees lawful immigration to the United States.

The plan is to pursue “meaningful immigration reform absent legislative action.” USCIS will extend benefits and/or protections to illegal aliens, thus reducing the threat of deportation. The concept is set forth in a memorandum entitled, “Administrative Alternatives to Comprehensive Immigration Reform.”

Deportations are being delayed indefinitely, “green cards” are being issued to illegal aliens declaring them legal permanent residents (LPRs), and “extreme hardship” is being redefined, among other bureaucratic chicanery. The consequences (intended or unintended) include legal fees for jubilant immigration lawyers.

Among these illegal aliens are an estimated 700,000 students, many of whom are staging demonstrations for comprehensive immigration reform. In July 2010, Capitol Hill Police arrested 21 illegal-alien students holding sit-ins at U.S. Senate offices; yet no immigration action was taken against them.

Democrats in Congress support the student demands, and Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., is sponsoring a bill to suspend deportation of illegal-alien students and place them on a pathway to citizenship.

Meanwhile the DHS is ordering the release of detained illegal aliens who have not had a felony arrest in the past two years. Purportedly, this will allow the department more time to deport those illegal aliens with felony arrests in the past two years. The plan might make sense, if these deported felons, many of them violent criminals, were not able to re-enter the United States at will across our open borders.

At the DHS, the Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) states that “in a world of limited resources, our time is better spent on someone who is here unlawfully and is committing crimes.” Who is this comprehensive immigration reformer? He is John Morton, a native of Inverness, Scotland, raised in Virginia and educated at the University of Virginia.

After interning with Amnesty International and a private law firm, he went with the U.S. Department of Justice, Immigration and Naturalization Service (the old INS). In 2009, Obama nominated him as assistant secretary of ICE.
Morton has stated that he will not process illegal aliens detained under the Arizona S-1070 law.

Despite being an early supporter of comprehensive immigration reform (amnesty), he now claims that the Obama administration does not support amnesty for illegal aliens. Yet on Aug. 20, 2010, ICE authorized dropping of remaining charges against 17,000 detained illegal aliens who have applied for legal status.

The nation is getting mixed messages from the ICE high command, and some career ICE personnel are taking note. The American Federation of Government Employees (AFL-CIO), National Council 118, whose members are ICE employees, unanimously voted “no confidence” for John Morton and ICE Assistant Director Phyllis Coven.

Union members complain that Morton and Coven have abandoned the agency’s core mission of enforcing immigration laws and that ICE personnel are being asked to campaign for amnesty-related programs and policies.
The Council 118 president stated that ICE leaders seek large-scale release of criminal aliens back into local communities and refuse for “political reasons” the necessary manpower and resources for the agency to function as required by law.

Union members say that ICE leaders are creating “amnesty through policy” by limiting the ability of ICE agents to make arrests.

High numbers of criminal-alien deportations are meaningless, because ICE agents know that deportation does not keep criminal aliens from immediately re-entering the United States. Criminal aliens awaiting deportation are known to brag that U.S. border security is broken, and they will be back within days.

The Obama administration contradicts itself by declaring that the Southwest border is more secure than it has been in 20 years but that sections of it are “too dangerous” for U.S. Border Patrol enforcement.

In Arizona, 60 miles of Interstate 8 have signs posted by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management stating that the area is unsafe due to “active drug and human smuggling”. In effect, illegal aliens are being provided an unpatrolled “pathway” to the United States and to amnesty by default.