House committee chair blasts Obama continuing unlawful immigration
“You can count on me to defend President Obama’s executive actions on DACA and DAPA when I am president,” Hillary Clinton said, referring to Obama’s 2012 (DACA) and 2014 (DAPA) executive amnesties, which gave work permits and access to federal benefits to millions of illegal immigrants.
Congressman Bob Goodlatte, R-Virginia, chairman of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, issued a statement in the midst of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia criticizing the Obama Administration’s latest over-reach of its executive-branch powers. Unfortunately, the news media ignored the statement’s release and its contents in order to maintain the Democratic Party’s positive narrative during the Democratic National Convention and its aftermath.
The statement blasts President Obama for expanding his policy allowing certain aliens, including those who have received his own brand of executive amnesty, to have their relatives living in Honduras, Guatemala, or El Salvador brought to the United States to live.
“Once again, the Obama Administration has decided to blow wide open any small discretion it has in order to reward individuals who have no lawful presence in the United States with the ability to bring their family members here. Today’s expansion of the Obama Administration’s policy is simply a continuation of the government-sanctioned border surge [that brought thousands of children, teenagers and young adults into the United States], said Rep. Goodlatte.
According to the congressman, tens of thousands of illegal immigrants continue to pour across the U.S. Southwest border and are benefiting from Obama’s lax immigration enforcement. This latest surge creates another category of immigrants who can simply use this Obama government program to enter and stay in the United States at taxpayer expense.
“By allowing unlawful immigrants to benefit from this program, the Obama Administration undermines the integrity of our immigration system and the rule of law, and makes the system unfair for those who seek to come to the United States legally. Rather than take the steps necessary to end the ongoing crisis at the border, the Obama Administration perpetuates it by abusing a legal tool meant to be used sparingly to bring people to the United States and instead applying it to the masses in Central America,” stated Goodlatte.
The State Department and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) on Tuesday had announced an expansion of a program that allows certain aliens – lawful permanent residents and those with temporary protected status, parole, withholding of removal, deferred action, and deferred enforced departure – to petition for relatives in Honduras, Guatemala, or El Salvador to come to the United States.
The program currently allows these aliens to petition for their unmarried children under the age of 21 and their current spouse (if they live with the child) to be considered for in-country refugee processing. The program is now expanded to their children over the age of 21; their parents; and caregivers of their minor children who are related to them, such as grandparents, aunts and uncles, according to the statement.
If these relatives do not meet the refugee requirements under the law, they can then be considered for parole into the United States, a tool that is, even according to the Administration itself, meant to be used sparingly on a case-by-case basis.
President Obama has boasted that his administration has deported more illegal aliens than any previous administration, but his claim met with an abundance of pushback by Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who complain this administration is “cooking the books.”
One method is to count those illegal aliens who are caught attempting to enter the U.S. – and who are quickly sent back – as deportations even if it’s the same person attempting illegal entry several times. Each attempt is logged as a deportation, according to agents.
