Obama's Stealth Amnesty Express

Obama's Stealth Amnesty Express
Janet M. LaRue
8-2-10

Amnesty is on the horizon. Open and transparent government be damned—full speed ahead. Barack Obama is throwing overboard his commitment to "an unprecedented level of openness in Government" as he pursues his ultimate goal of "fundamentally transforming the United States of America."

An internal draft memo to Alejandro N. Mayorkas, director of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), from four staff members advises him that the USCIS, under certain provisions of the “Immigration and Nationality Act,” may, among other remedies, "develop and implement a registration program for individuals who are unlawfully present in the U.S."

Call me a cock-eyed cynic, but I’d bet the boat that their "registration program" includes registering the "individuals" as Democrats.

National Review posted the memo on its web site Thursday in conjunction with an article by Robert VerBruggen. According to VerBruggen:

"In recent weeks, Sen. Chuck Grassley and others in Congress have been pressing the administration to disavow rumors that a de facto amnesty is in the works, including in a letter to Department of Homeland Security head Janet Napolitano. "Since the senators first wrote to the president more than a month ago, we have not been reassured that the plans are just rumors, and we have every reason to believe that the memo is legitimate," a Grassley spokesman tells NR. (NR contacted DHS, but a spokesman did not have a comment on the record.)"

Obama’s four oarsmen at USCIS call their proposed agency course correction "administrative relief options” to accomplish "meaningful immigration reform without legislation." Think of it as transforming the U.S. into a nation of men and not laws.

Article I of the U.S. Constitution calls it legislating without a license. Followers of the Constitution can see it as amnesty by a closed and dictatorial executive branch that treats the Constitution as an obsolete opinion.

Current federal law enacted by Congress, otherwise known as the legislative branch of government, prohibits "registration" of "illegal entrants" who are "present" in the United States. Title 8 U.S.C. Sec. 1182(a)(6)(A)(i) addresses "classes of aliens ineligible for visas or admission." It states:

"In general an alien present in the United States without being admitted or paroled, or who arrives in the United States at any time or place other than as designated by the Attorney General, is inadmissible."

The last time we checked, the Attorney General hadn’t "designated" holes in the fence or tunnels between Mexico and the U.S. as ports of entry. But who can keep up with Eric Holder’s latest frivolities? He’s been preoccupied suing Arizona for doing the feds’ immigration enforcement job.

Making the "inadmissible" "admissible" without validly enacted law is not the job of USCIS. It’s for a job for Congress to do, if its members are sufficiently self-destructive to ignore the will of a majority of Americans.

According to Rasmussen Reports, July 30, 2010, “66% of Mainstream voters want individual states to enforce immigration law.” According to NumbersUSA.com: “Recent polls reveal that 62% favor better control of the borders over amnesty and even 45% of liberals oppose amnesty.”

Taking note of public opinion is probably why the USCIS course-correctors admit that their “administrative alternatives” “would likely be controversial, not to mention expensive.”

After the memo was disclosed, USCIS issued a no comment “comment” in response to the leaked memo.

Internal draft memos do not and should not be equated with official action or policy of the Department. We will not comment on notional, pre-decisional memos. As a matter of good government, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) will discuss just about every issue that comes within the purview of the immigration system. We continue to maintain that comprehensive bipartisan legislation, coupled with smart, effective enforcement, is the only solution to our nation’s immigration challenges.

Internal memoranda help us do the thinking that leads to important changes; some of them are adopted and others are rejected. Our goal is to implement policies wisely and well to strengthen all aspects of our mission. The choices we have made so far have strengthened both the enforcement and services sides of USCIS — nobody should mistake deliberation and exchange of ideas for final decisions. To be clear, DHS will not grant deferred action or humanitarian parole to the nation’s entire illegal immigrant population.

Rest assured Americans, we haven’t caught them with their course set for Amnestyville, yet. They’re still just a bunch of thinkers bouncing some ideas off the asylum walls.

Did you catch the pregnant admission? They “will not grant deferred action or humanitarian parole to the nation’s entire illegal immigrant population.” That would be sooo transparent.

Just a few thousand here and a few million there, unless Congress takes control of the legislative helm and the President begins obeying the Constitution instead of flouting it.