Tag Archives: Amnesty

The Push For Amnesty For Illegal Immigrants

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Speaker of the House Mike Johnson posted the following on Twitter:

This is the first step toward granting voting rights to all of those who have entered our country illegally. They will not be required to go through the process of becoming a citizen, they will have no understanding of America and its Constitution. They will be a group of totally uneducated voters easily swayed by the lies of the mainstream media. They are here to replace the votes of the Americans who have become aware of the lies of the mainstream media. If amnesty happens, we will not recognize our country within three years.

About That Fourteenth Amendment Thing…

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I am not a lawyer, nor do I claim to be one. However, I am concerned about the lawfare being conducted against President Trump.

In the January 2024 issue of Newsmax Magazine, Hans von Spakovsky wrote a commentary about the use of the 14th Amendment to keep President Trump off of the primary ballot in several states.

Section 3 of the 14th Amendment states:

Section 3.

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Note that Congress may remove such disability.

The article in Newsmax notes:

In 1872, Congress passed an Amnesty Act providing that the “political disabilities” imposed by Section 3 “are hereby removed from all persons whomsoever” except for members of Congress who had served just before and during the Civil War, as well as a limited number of other officials.

In 1898, Congress passed a second Amnesty Act getting rid of these remaining exceptions, providing that the “disability imposed by section 3…heretofore incurred is hereby removed.”

That sounds to me like using the 14th Amendment to keep President Trump off of the ballot does not agree with the laws Congress has passed since the 14th Amendment.

Also, doesn’t there have to be a trial and a conviction?

It should also be noted that the removal of President Trump from the ballot represents taking away the right of the American people to vote for whoever they choose. This sounds like something that happens in dictatorships. The only reason to remove someone from the ballot is if they do not have enough support to run for election. Obviously that is not the problem with President Trump.

 

The Damage Done And The Damage To Come

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The Epoch Times reported the following today:

The Senate on Tuesday morning passed the $1.2 trillion White House-backed infrastructure bill after weeks of debate, although it’s not clear whether the bill will advance in the Democrat-controlled House.

The measure, called the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, was hashed out by a bipartisan group of senators and President Joe Biden’s administration. The bill, which passed 69-30, will include $550 billion in new federal spending over five years.

The 2,700-page-long bill invests $110 billion toward roads, bridges, and major projects; provides some $66 billion to passenger and freight rail; $65 billion to rebuild the electric grid; $65 billion to expand broadband internet lines; $55 billion for water pipes including replacing lead pipes; and more.

“It has taken quite a long time, and there have been detours and everything else, but this will do a whole lot of good for America, and the Senate can be proud it has passed this,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said about the bill.

While some have described the bill as “bipartisan,” several prominent Republicans have vocally opposed it and claimed it would hand a victory to Democrats in Congress ahead of a fraught 2022 midterm election season. Former President Donald Trump again pilloried Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who voted in favor of the measure, for giving the bill his blessing while publicly questioning the Kentucky Republican’s leadership capacity.

On Sunday The Conservative Treehouse reported:

Good grief these UniParty Senators are infuriating.  During this interview with Maria Bartiromo, North Dakota Senator Kevin Cramer (U-DC) actually has the nerve to brag about $450 billion in infrastructure spending amid a phase-one bill that has $1.2 trillion in total.  What’s the other $800 billion dollars being spent on doofus?

Another of Cramer’s advocacy points is how the U.S. Chamber of Commerce supports the bill; as if that’s a good thing.  Making matters worse, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer devised a process pledging that this part of the infrastructure bill (phase-1) will only advance if it is married to the House party-line legislation (phase-2) that will spend as much as $3.5 trillion MORE on climate change action, paid leave policies, health care expansion, and other progressive agenda items.

The insufferable republicans that support the phase-one bill (The DeceptiCon crew) are, by direct consequence, advancing the $3.5 trillion phase-two bill that is entirely a Democrat spending spree on the Green New Deal and other insane initiatives. Acckkkk… we desperately need a second party in DC.

The passage of this bill is expected to pave the way for the reconciliation passage of the $3.5 trillion Democrat budget resolution.

Yesterday Red State Observer reported:

The framework for a $3.5 trillion Democrat budget resolution includes plans to provide amnesty to millions of illegal aliens living in the United States via the filibuster-proof reconciliation process.

On Monday, Senate Democrats unveiled the budget framework, which includes a series of instructions for various Senate committees to craft specific plans. As such, the framework instructs the Senate Judiciary Committee to spend $107 billion in American taxpayer money on amnesty for illegal aliens.

The language of the framework is vague, asking the Judiciary Committee members to give “lawful permanent status for qualified immigrants.” Those who would qualify for such an amnesty remain unclear.

The cost of the amnesty to taxpayers is just slightly lower than Senate Budget Committee chairman Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) amnesty plan, which was projected to cost $150 billion.

Any amnesty plan crafted by Democrats is expected to give green cards, which lead to naturalized American citizenship, millions of illegal aliens eligible for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), those with Temporary Protected Status (TPS), those working on U. S. farms, and those considered “essential” workers.

This bill is not a step forward for Americans. It is a giant step into more government control of our lives and spending that will create massive inflation.

Not Surprising

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Yesterday Just the News posted an article about some of the surprises the Democrats have planned for their giant budget reconciliation bill.

The article reports:

Democrats might try adding amnesty for illegal immigrants to an infrastructure bill being pushed through as budget reconciliation, says John Zadrozny, a former Trump administration official.

“[U]nfortunately, there is a chance that could happen,” Zadrozny told the John Solomon Reports podcast on Monday. “And it’s difficult, in some ways, but I think it’s just something they want to do.”

Including amnesty in an infrastructure bill “is a remarkably honest move by the Democrats, because they’re using the infrastructure bill to build their future Democrat Party voter infrastructure,” he added.

“This is not about national security, this is not about building roads, this is about an amnesty,” said Zadrozny, who is the current director of the Center for Homeland Security and Immigration of the America First Policy Institute. “And so, that just means they’d like to add 20 to 30 million people to the voter rolls because they can’t convince Americans about their viewpoints.”

The Democrats are attempting to pass an infrastructure bill, while possibly including amnesty, as a budget reconciliation bill. Budget reconciliation, which Zadrozny said is supposed to be “for bills relating to spending, taxing, and the debt ceiling,” only requires a majority of votes to pass in the Senate, rather than the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster.

Zadrozny noted that Republicans will have to work together to block amnesty provisions. He compared the GOP to “an open mic night at a comedy club” where “everyone does their own thing.”

Democrats, on the other hand, “will march to death to achieve a generational objective,” Zadrozny said. He provided the example of Democrats passing Obamacare in 2010 at the cost of losing their majority in Congress during the midterm elections.

In January of this year, The Conservative Treehouse posted an article warning about the Democrats’ using the reconciliation process to pass amnesty. If that happens, America will become a one-party nation ruled by a bunch of power-hungry elitists.

Lying About The Numbers

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Townhall posted an article today about the number of people who are in America illegally. The mainstream media frequently states that there are 11 million people in America illegally. That is the number being used when amnesty for everyone here illegally is discussed. But it is interesting to consider that 11 million was the number given during the 1990’s when the late Congresswoman Barbara Jordan (D-TX) held her commission on immigration reform back. Are we to assume that the number has not increased since then? Somehow I doubt that.

In January, Breitbart reported the following:

Roughly 14.5 million illegal aliens live across the United States, costing American taxpayers about $134 billion every year, a new study reveals.

An annual study released by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) finds that the illegal alien population in the U.S. has grown by at least 200,000 since 2019 and has cost taxpayers an additional $2 billion since last year.

That is probably a low estimate of the number of people here illegally and the cost of having them here. To put the number of illegal aliens in perspective, the population of New York City is approximately 8 million. The population of America is approximately 328 million. What impact would granting citizenship to 11 million people who may not understand the government or the responsibilities of citizenship in America have on our country?

Townhall reports that the Tucker Carlson show on the Fox News reported the following:

The “U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021,” unveiled by Democrats earlier this month, would provide a pathway to citizenship for what many have said to be “11 million” currently illegal immigrants.

After pointing out studies from Yale and MIT suggesting the number is much higher, Carlson spent several minutes explaining how the bank Bear Stearns used bank transfers, remittances, and other data points to estimate the immigrant population “to be as high as 20 million” 16 years ago, in 2005.

“That was all 16 years ago,” Carlson said. “And now, in 2021, the party in charge is still assuring us that the number of illegal immigrants in this country has somehow declined by up to 10 million people. Could that be true?”

“How insulting is that, even to float that idea?” he continued. “Consider everything that has happened since 2006. Amnesty for the so-called dreamers, the promises of mass amnesty, the endless caravans. So the 11 million number is above all, a lie. The 11 million number is one of the more obvious lies ever told. We’re a TV show. We are not social scientists, and it took about an hour to find this out. It’s a ridiculous lie.”

I am in favor of changing our immigration laws to make it easier for people to come here legally. However, we are currently in the middle of a pandemic and the economic consequences of that pandemic. I would strongly suggest that we work to get Americans back to work and on their feet before we open the gates wide to allow more people to come to America.

 

This Will Suppress Wage Growth For Unskilled Workers

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Yesterday Breitbart reported that as President, Joe Biden announced that he will provide U.S. citizenship to everyone who can show they were in the United States illegally on January 1. Has anyone actually thought this through? (Please look up the Cloward-Piven strategy if you are not familiar with it.) This is the equivalent of having ten people move in with your family and your being expected to feed and clothe them. It also needs to be understood that the people here illegally have a certain amount of disrespect for our laws–otherwise they would not have broken them to get here. This is also going to create a run on the southern border by people who figure they can forge the needed documents once they get here.

The article reports:

But the “rush to the border” is likely because migrants and the coyotes’ smuggling industry can backdate documents and forge new identities, especially when the prize is the opportunity to escape their lives in undeveloped countries and then become citizens of the United States of America.

“Biden, he’s going to help all of us,” one English-speaking Honduran told CNN on Sunday. “He’s given us 100 days to get to the U.S. and give us legal [unintelligible] paper so we can get a better life for our kids and family.”

The 1986 amnesty of roughly three million illegal aliens included much evidence of pre-computer fraud and a rejection rate of only about 12 percent, according to a government-sponsored study. Blue-collar household incomes have risen very little since the 1986 amnesty, although there was a sharp seven percent jump in 2019.

The Post‘s article did not include an estimate of how many migrants — and their chain-migration extended families — would benefit from an amnesty, nor did it allow any readers’ comments.

Biden’s plan will also remove any barrier to the inflow of white-collar workers who can earn a science or technology doctoral degree at one of the nation’s thousands of colleges and universities, the Post reported…

This will depress the wages of tech workers, making Biden’s supporters in Silicon Valley happy while hurting American workers. Adding thousands of unskilled workers will depress the wages of those American workers on the lower end of the pay scale. Added to the push for a $15 minimum wage, this will likely increase unemployment and poverty.

The election of Joe Biden represents the end of putting Americans first. I hope his voters are happy with being last.

Cloward-Piven In Action

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Cloward-Piven is a strategy created by two Columbia University professors in the 1960’s. Essentially it is a plan to overwhelm a free market economic system in order to create a socialistic system.

Oathkeepers describes the strategy as follows:

In their 1966 article, Cloward and Piven charged that the ruling classes used welfare to weaken the poor; that by providing a social safety net, the rich doused the fires of rebellion. Poor people can advance only when “the rest of society is afraid of them,” Cloward told The New York Times on September 27, 1970. Rather than placating the poor with government hand-outs, wrote Cloward and Piven, activists should work to sabotage and destroy the welfare system; the collapse of the welfare state would ignite a political and financial crisis that would rock the nation; poor people would rise in revolt; only then would “the rest of society” accept their demands.

Basically, when the government runs out of money, the people who depend on the government for their income will revolt. How do you hasten the government’s running out of money? One way would be to abruptly add thousands of new citizens who might need government benefits.

Yesterday The Conservative Review reported the following:

Joe Biden announced during an NBC News interview that aired on Tuesday evening that he will immediately move to give citizenship to millions of illegal aliens once he gets into office in two months.

“I’m going to make a commitment in the first 100 days, I will send an immigration bill to the United States Senate with a pathway to citizenship for over 11 million undocumented people in America,” Biden said. “I will also be moving to do away with some of the I think very damaging executive orders that have significantly impacted on making the climate worse and making us less healthy.”

Biden has already pledged to dramatically increase the number of refugees that he admits into the U.S. from 15,000 under President Donald Trump to 125,000. Biden has also pledged to end the Trump administration’s travel ban on nations that are considered to be hot beds of terrorism.

It should also be noted that if Joe Biden becomes President, he will increase the number of H1B visas–the visas that allow foreign tech workers access to American jobs. That will repay Silicon Valley for their help with his campaign–they will have access to cheaper foreign labor instead of having to pay Americans. This will increase unemployment among American tech workers.

A Biden Presidency will be a nightmare for the working people of America. Hopefully the election fraud that occurred on election night can be revealed and reversed.

That Was Then, This Is Now

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Amy Klobucher is the only candidate left in the Democrat primary who even seems to be a moderate. She’s not, but she is at least able to play the role well. However, there seems to be some distance between her current statements and her past statements.

Yesterday Breitbart posted a video of some remarks Amy Klobucher made in 2006.

The article reports what Ms. Klobucher said in 2006:

In 2006, while running for the U.S. Senate, Amy Klobuchar held the same positions on illegal immigration as President Donald Trump — supporting a physical barrier at the U.S.-Mexico border and mandatory E-Verify to ban employers from hiring illegal aliens.

Unearthed footage of a 2006 U.S. Senate candidate debate at the University of St. Thomas reveals Klobuchar once held similar views on illegal immigration as Trump, policies she now avidly opposes as she runs for the 2020 Democrat presidential nomination.

“I do believe that we need more resources at the border and that includes a fence,” Klobuchar said. “What we have now, we have people waiting to come in legally. Thousands of people waiting to come in legally to this country, and we have people coming in illegally. That’s not right. We need to get order at the border.”

Klobuchar went even further, touting her support for nationwide mandatory E-Verify to open jobs for Americans and prohibit businesses from hiring illegal aliens:

But we also have to stop giving amnesty to companies that are hiring illegal immigrants. Under this administration, the number of prosecutions of companies [hiring illegal immigrants] has gone way down. That has to change. [Emphasis added]

That is a totally rational statement about immigration. However, things have evidently changed for Ms. Klobucher.

The article reports:

Today, Klobuchar has dropped all support for physical barriers along the southern border to stop illegal immigration and drug trafficking, vowing on her campaign website to rescind all border wall funding that Trump has secured in recent months and end the national emergency declaration at the border.

“Stop the diversion of funds needed to modernize our military bases from being used for the border wall,” Klobuchar touts, continuing that she “will rescind President Trump’s national emergency declaration and return funding for its intended purpose.”

On mandatory E-Verify, Klobuchar has said explicitly that she will not support such a policy unless it is coupled with an amnesty for the majority of the 11 to 22 million illegal aliens living across the U.S.

How can anyone look at the deaths in America caused by illegal drugs smuggled across the southern border and the murders committed by people who are here illegally and not want to control who enters America? An open border is not a plan for our success as a nation–it is an invitation for people who want to come here to take advantage of our rapidly breaking safety net–not who want to come here to help build our country.

 

Ignoring The Economic Implications

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Yesterday Breitbart posted an article about some recent comments by Senator Elizabeth Warren about immigration. Senator Warren is either unaware of the impact of unskilled immigrant workers on American workers’ wages or she is simply ignoring the facts.

The article reports her comments:

We need a pathway to citizenship for the people who are here and here to stay. They are our neighbors; they are our brothers and sisters. They are here. We need a path — not just for DREAMers — but also a path for grandmas, and for little kids, and for people who came here to work on farms, and for students who overstayed their visas. We need a path that is fair and achievable. Bring people out of the shadows. It is good for all workers, and we need to get them into our unions. [Emphasis added]

The article notes:

Similarly, Warren is promising to expand legal immigration levels, which are already at historically record-high rates. About 1.2 million mostly low-skilled legal immigrants are admitted every year, not including the hundreds of thousands who arrive on temporary visas to compete against Americans for jobs.

…Research by analyst Steven Camarotta has found that every one percent increase in the immigrant portion of American workers’ occupations reduces their weekly wages by about 0.5 percent. This means the average native-born American worker today has his weekly wages reduced by perhaps 8.5 percent because of current legal immigration levels.

While Warren seeks to increase foreign competition against American workers in the labor market, President Donald Trump has pursued policy initiatives to decrease competition, increasing U.S. wages and giving American workers leverage over businesses.

I would like to see people who came here illegally ‘come out of the shadows.’ They need to have some sort of way that they can work to support themselves. However, I don’t want people who came here illegally to be put ahead of people who are going through the legal process to become citizens. That is simply unfair. I am willing to let people who come here illegally have access to legal employment, but I think people who came here illegally should be put in line to become citizens–at the end of the current line. Breaking the law should not result in special privileges.

Would You Vote For This Man?

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On Saturday, The Washington Post posted a story about Nathan Larson who is running as an independent libertarian for the state’s 10th district, a swath of land across three counties in Northern Virginia outside the Washington suburbs.

Today The Daily Caller posted a story about Mr. Larson that stated:

Nathan Larson is the candidate, running in Virginia, and Democratic ex-Governor Terry McAuliffe is the man who allowed him to run by restoring voting rights to thousands of convicted felons in 2016, Larson among them. Larson landed himself in prison in 2008 after sending a letter to the Secret Service threatening to kill the president. That felony conviction would have made it impossible for him to vote or run for office for the rest of his life, but McAullife’s blanket amnesty changed that. Since his release from prison, Larson has revealed some horrifying things about his late ex-wife and his sexual preferences.

The Washington Post reports:

He believes in instituting a patriarchal system, with women under the authority of men; he supports abolishing age restrictions for marriage and laws against marital rape; he believes that white supremacy is a “system that works,” that Hitler was a “good thing for Germany,” and that incest should be legalized, at least in the context of marriage. And at one point in a conversation with The Post, he seemed to express admiration for the system run by the Taliban in Afghanistan, noting that the country’s birthrate fell as a consequence of increased opportunities for women after the United States’ more than decade-long intervention.

Mr. Larson was given the right to vote after Terry McAullife restored felons’ right to vote. Mr. Larson has taken it one step further and decided to run for office. I can’t imaging anyone voting for this man.

The Issue Or The Solution?

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One of the problems with Washington is that if there is a problem, the political types will always try to figure out if solving it is the answer or if playing up the issue and the fact that it is not solved will gain votes. That is one of many reasons it is so hard to get things done. It is a shame that our politicians have forgotten that they are supposed to work for the voters and that they were sent to Washington to accomplish things. There are a few aspects of illegal immigration that make it very difficult to solve. The Democrats want the issue and the future voters. The Republican corporate types want cheap labor. There is also a school of thought that leaving the issue of the ‘dreamers’ unsolved will bring out Democratic voters–another reason Democrats would rather have the problem than the solution. Meanwhile, no one in Washington is looking at the negative impact of illegal workers on the salaries of Americans with low skills.

Paul Mirengoff at Power Line posted an article today about the failure of Congress to pass a bill to help the ‘dreamers.’ He pointed out some of the last minute things that were added to one ‘compromise’ bill.

The article quotes a Washington Post article:

[A]s the “war room” of administration lawyers and policy experts examined the 64-page text on Wednesday, it was a handwritten note on the final page that set off the loudest alarm bells. That section dealt with setting in law DHS’s priorities for enforcement. Under the proposal, the agency would focus its powers on immigrants with felonies or multiple misdemeanors, who were national security threats and who had arrived in the country after a certain date.

Scribbled in the margins was a date: June 30, 2018 [Note: an end of January date in the typed text was crossed out].

The administration team was dumbstruck: In addition to making it harder for DHS to deport all of those already here illegally, lawmakers were opening the door to a surge of new unauthorized immigrants by setting an effective “amnesty” date four months in the future.

“No one who has worked on immigration issues in the administration or on the Hill was aware of any legislation that had ever been proposed and scheduled to receive a vote on the floor of the Senate that created an amnesty program effectively for those who arrive in the future,” said a DHS official who helped lead the review. “That would clearly and unequivocally encourage a massive wave of illegal immigration and visa overstays.”

(Emphasis added by Paul Mirengoff)

What this bill would do would be to extend amnesty to anyone who arrived before June 30. Does anyone believe that setting that date would not encourage a flood of illegal immigrants wanting to arrive before the deadline. There is no way anyone who read the bill all the way through and understood its consequences could support it.

The article at Power Line concludes:

Perhaps some wanted to maximize the amnesty, while others were too lazy to read to the end of bill or too clueless to grasp the consequences of what they read.

From the Democrats’ perspective, was the prospective amnesty something they thought they could sneak through or was it a poison pill? Some have speculated that Democrats don’t want any deal that includes a wall and would like (or be okay with) a political landscape in which the Dreamers are still in limbo.

Perhaps Democrats saw inclusion of the handwritten note as a win-win. Either they get all those new illegal immigrants ensconced here or they blame the administration for doing nothing for Dreamers.

Today’s Post story looks like implementation of the second option.

When you hear the Democrats complain that President Trump refused to help the ‘dreamers,’ remember that it was the Democrats who made sure the bill would not be passed. It is obvious that the issue is of more value to the Democratic party than a solution.

How Much Does It Cost?

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Charity is a wonderful thing when it is voluntary–not so much when it is coerced. Yesterday The Washington Examiner posted an article that illustrates how charity can be coerced.

The article reports:

Amnesty for illegal immigrants like a program proposed by Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton would require an immediate tax hike of $1.2 trillion, a $15,000 hit on every household in America, according to a new analysis of immigration reform.

…”The findings in the report indicate that if amnesty for illegal immigrants were enacted, the government would have to raise taxes immediately by $1.29 trillion and put that sum into a high-yield bank account to cover future fiscal losses generated by the amnesty recipients and their children,” said Robert Rector, Heritage’s senior domestic research fellow.

“To cover the future cost, each U.S. household currently paying federal income tax would have to pay, on average, an immediate lump sum of over $15,000,” he added.

So why is the Democratic Party so intent on amnesty? There are a number of reasons. The most obvious is to create an underclass of Democratic voters. The demographics of the Democratic voter have changed in recent years as the party has moved dramatically to the left. People in the working middle class are no longer willing to blindly follow the Democrats–they have watched Democratic politicians take bigger and bigger chunks of money out of their paychecks to support social programs that do not reduce poverty and do destroy families. The legalization of unskilled illegal aliens would create a permanent underclass to replace the middle class voters.

But there is also another reason. Our politicians in Washington have not always represented us well. They have avoided the hard decisions in order to be re-elected. One of those hard decisions is the reform of Social Security, which is rapidly going bankrupt. One reason for that bankruptcy is the lack of new workers coming into the workforce to support the payments to retirees. One of the reasons for the lack of new workers is the number of babies that have been aborted since 1973. According to the Guttmacher Institute, more than one million babies have been aborted every year since 1975. Some years the number has been as high as 1,500,000, some years it has been about 1,000,000. These are workers who would have been entering the workforce over the past twenty years that would have kept Social Security solvent. An influx of workers that were formerly under the table would fund Social Security for a few more years. By the time the new workers retire, the current members of Congress may no longer be in Washington to be held accountable. Congress would rather kick the can down the road than solve the Social Security funding problem. Amnesty is one way to do that.

Listening To Judges Only When It Is Convenient

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The Washington Times posted an article yesterday about the Obama Administration’s failure to rescind the work permits issued to illegal aliens in violation of a court order. In May I wrote an article about the fact that the Obama Administration had continued to grant work permits to illegal aliens after a judge had issued an injunction against the permits in February halting the President’s amnesty program. There were about 2,000 applications for work permits approved, and the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has not been able to get the three-year permits back. Previously two-year permits had been issued.

The article reports:

But Judge Hanen was shocked to learn that USCIS issued the 2,000 three-year amnesties even after he’d issued his injunction.

“I expect you to resolve the 2,000; I’m shocked that you haven’t,” Judge Hanen (Judge Andrew S. Hanen) told the Justice Department at a hearing last week, according to the San Antonio Express-News. “If they’re not resolved by July 31, I’m going to have to figure out what action to take.”

Homeland Security says it’s changed the duration of the work permits from three years to two years in its computer systems, but getting the cards returned from the illegal immigrants themselves is tougher.

The office of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is leading the lawsuit challenging the amnesty and who won the February injunction against the policy, didn’t respond to a request for comment on the outstanding permits.

If I remember correctly, one of the reasons the Judge issued the injunction was that he said that once amnesty was granted, it would be very difficult to undo what had been done. What has happened with the 2,000 work permits that were illegally issued illustrates his point. We are supposed to be a nation of laws–not a nation of men. It would be nice if the Obama Administration would remember that.

Will Someone Please Read The Consitituion

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President Obama stated many times that he did not have the power to grant amnesty to illegal aliens–then he did it. A number of states sued the government to stop the move, stating that it would be damaging to their states. A judge in Texas blocked President Obama’s amnesty program from being implemented.

The Hill posted an article yesterday updating the situation:

The Department of Justice on Wednesday said it will not make an emergency request to the Supreme Court to lift an order blocking President Obama’s executive action on immigration.

…The decision by DOJ means that a Texas federal judge’s order to temporarily block Obama’s controversial immigration executive orders will remain in place, at least for now.

On Tuesday, a panel on the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 against lifting that hold, with the majority opinion written by two Republican-appointed judges arguing that the “public interest favors maintenance of the injunction.”

In July, the 5th Circuit will hear the appeal of the Obama Administration.

The article points out:

The same 5th Circuit is also reviewing a separate challenge on the injunction and will hear oral arguments in that case during the first full week of July. The administration will try to persuade the judges to lift the injunction during that argument.

The injunction stems from a larger suit filed by 26 states on whether Obama’s executive actions are constitutional.

President Obama has brought executive orders to a whole new level. Hopefully the courts will stop this, as Congress has not exercised its proper role.

The Cost Of Executive Amnesty

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One of the talking points of the Obama Administration regarding executive amnesty is that it will be good for the American economy. That is debatable considering the number of legal Americans currently unable to find jobs, but what it is about to do to the American taxpayer is definitely destructive.

Judicial Watch posted an article on its website today detailing the cost of President Obama’s executive amnesty.

The article reports:

The U.S. government will spend nearly half a billion dollars, expand its workforce by 3,100 and open a 280,000-square-foot compound in Virginia to carry out President Obama’s amnesty order, according to detailed government figures provided to Judicial Watch.

The numbers are breathtaking and include a $647,590 monthly rent bill for a new facility at 2200 Crystal Drive in Arlington Virginia. It will be the processing headquarters for two Obama amnesty plans—Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA)—that will allow millions of illegal immigrants to remain in the U.S. Last month a federal court in Texas blocked the amnesty order, but records show the administration is ready to pull the trigger if it succeeds in appealing the ruling.

The article goes on to break down the administrative costs of executive amnesty–both the initial cost and the ongoing cost. This is an unbelievably bad deal for all Americans. We do need to streamline our immigration policies, but we cannot successfully assimilate three thousand people in a matter of months without bankrupting federal and state governments.

Executive amnesty is a nightmare waiting to happen.

This Might Be A Good Place To Cut The Federal Budget

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Fox News reported yesterday that the illegal immigrants that President Obama has granted amnesty will be eligible for retroactive tax refunds.

The article reports:

Byron York explained on “America’s Newsroom” that illegal immigrants will be eligible for the Earned Income Tax Credit, which is actually a government grant of up to $5,000 to working families.

“Illegal immigrants affected by the president’s edict will not only be eligible for those tax credits going forward, but three years retroactively,” York said. “So they’ll be able to collect quite a bit of money from the treasury.”

York explained that the IRS has issued taxpayer identification numbers to people who are in the U.S. illegally, but working, so that they can pay taxes.

Illegal immigrants who filed taxes that way over the past three years can now go back and amend those previous tax forms to claim the Earned Income Tax Credit.

Unbelievable.

Did The Election Of 2014 Mean Anything?

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We are about to find out if the election of 2014 meant anything at all in Washington, D.C. The election was a resounding victory for Republicans at all levels of government. It was also an expression of voter dissatisfaction with the current status quo.

Brietbart.com posted an article today pointing out that it would only take 29 conservatives to unseat John Boehner as Speaker of the House. Recent polls have shown that as many as 60 percent of Republicans would like to see John Boehner replaced as Speaker of the House.

The article reports:

At this critical juncture, the few dozen conservatives in the House have two options.

They can allow themselves and the 2014 electorate to remain disenfranchised, helplessly standing by while Boehner passes crucial legislation on amnesty, budget bills, Obamacare, and debt ceiling increases with Democrat support. Or they can seize control of their own destiny by using the first vote of this Congress – the only vote for which Boehner cannot rely on Democrat support – to veto the Speaker himself and preempt a disastrous two years of lawmaking.

Despite misinformation some Republican members and incoming freshmen have given constituents, the selection of John Boehner for Speaker, unlike the election of the other party leaders, has not been cemented. And in fact, on Tuesday, if every Republican who claims to be frustrated and even appalled by Boehner’s behavior would vote for any other name, they can deny him reelection as Speaker.

The article concludes:

By joining together and organizing a move to deny Boehner the majority, these 29 conservatives can create such an opportunity. This would force a second or third ballot and Republicans would have to reconvene a conference. They would finally be compelled to negotiate with conservatives who would only agree to give their votes for someone who commits to certain fundamental principles and ironclad concessions.

Although this is arguably not a perfect plan, as these members stand before their constituents and gratuitously utter the words “John Boehner,” they will have sealed their own fate for the next two years because they have offered no alternative plan to reestablish a modicum of conservative control over the conservative party. Those self-described conservatives who are reluctant to join this effort have an obligation to put forth other ideas for reestablishing a voice within the party.

On Tuesday, choose wisely and fear no man.

If the Democrats and the Republicans are ignoring the will of the American people, it is time to replace them both.

Illegal Immigration In 2014

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On Friday, the Washington Times posted an article about the illegal immigration numbers for 2014.

The part of the article that caught my attention was:

Mr. Johnson (Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson), in a statement releasing the figures, blamed this summer’s surge of illegal immigrant children for the poor results.

“This year’s statistics are informed by a number of complex and shifting factors, most notably the 68 percent increase in migration from countries other than Mexico, predominately from Central America, and a 14 percent drop in Mexican migration since fiscal year 2013,” he said.

An administration official said this is the first time on record that border authorities have caught more non-Mexicans than Mexicans at the border, underscoring the changing demographics.

It is interesting to note that in order for illegal immigrants to come to America from Central America they usually have to cross through Mexico. It seems to me that we should be putting some pressure on the Mexican government concerning that. The number of ‘other than Mexicans (OTM’s)’ is also a concern. How many of these OTM’s are from countries that sponsor terrorism? This is no way to run a country.

The statistics on immigration and deportation for last year were listed in the article:

Apprehensions on the border, which Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson says is a yardstick for overall illegal immigration, rose 16 percent in fiscal year 2014, while deportations from within the interior of the U.S. — the measure of how much the administration is going after long-time illegal immigrants — fell 24 percent.

I am not against immigration, but it seems to me that a government that wants to control what children eat for lunch should be able to control its borders.

 

Watch The Shiny Thing Over Here

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Last night President Obama gave a speech outlining his executive action on immigration. Analyses of the speech are all over the internet. I chose My Way News as my reference point for this article. USA Today has the text of the speech.

There are three things to keep in mind about the President’s immigration order:

1. It is unconstitutional, but he knew that. The video of the President making the case against executive amnesty is poster here. However, making this speech shortly after a thumping in the mid-term election elevates the President to some degree of relevancy.

2. The President said, “This deal does not apply to anyone who has come to this country recently. It does not apply to anyone who might come to America illegally in the future. It does not grant citizenship, or the right to stay here permanently, or offer the same benefits that citizens receive – only Congress can do that.” (What happens to the people who came here four years and eleven months ago since five years is the cutoff date?) Some time in the next year or so, Congress will say, “These people are paying taxes and are not allowed to vote. That is taxation without representation. We can’t have that. We have to let them vote.” This will create millions of new Democrat voters.

3. Hugh Hewitt on Salem Radio last night made a very astute observation. The Iranian nuclear talks are about to conclude. It is very possible that President Obama will make a deal with Iran that allows Iran to make nuclear weapons. What you heard last night was to distract the American people from what is going on in Iran.

The speech last night was all about politics. Its purpose (among other things) was to goad the Republicans into doing something really stupid (that trick has worked occasionally in the past). Note that the pundits are saying in panic, “Don’t shut down the government by defunding anything.” That convinces me that defunding may be the way to go.

At any rate, get out the popcorn, the show has only begun.

Numbers USA

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Tonight I had the privilege of hearing Jim Robb of NumbersUSA speak at Stanly Hall in New Bern about immigration in America. NumbersUSA promotes moderate immigration levels. One of the comments Mr. Robb made about immigration in America today was, “Nineteenth Century Immigration Policy is incompatible with the Twenty-first Century Welfare State. I had never looked at immigration that way, but he is right.

When talking about President Obama’s declared move toward amnesty for five million people here illegally, Mr. Robb mentioned that Congress had three possible (if not probable) ways to stop amnesty. The most obvious way would be to simply defund the government agencies that would handle the amnesty. The second way to stop amnesty would be to impeach President Obama for violating the Constitution, but that is highly unlikely. The third way to stop amnesty would be to take the issue to the Supreme Court as a violation of the Constitution, but the Supreme Court would probably not be interested in hearing the issue unless Congress had already acted by defunding the measure.

Mr. Robb explained that there are a few problems that would be caused by amnesty. Under amnesty the average time to get a work VISA is six minutes. There is no time for proper background checks or screening. The new workers would be taking jobs in airports, companies that control electric grids, nuclear security, etc. without being properly screened. There would be a national security risk and a risk of endangering Americans. Other problems would be the increase in students our schools would have to educate, the increased drain on healthcare facilities, and the increased drain on social welfare programs.

Mr. Robb explained that there is another problem with providing six million green cards to new workers in America–we already have twenty  million legal Americans who can’t find full-time jobs.

The NumbersUSA website explains, “NumbersUSA favors an immigration policy that includes spouses, minor children, fair share of refugees, people with extraordinary skills and gives preferential treatment to American workers and those that come here legally.” That makes sense.

After the program, I was taking with a legal immigrant who had come to America as a child in 1949. The immigrant reminded me that during that time immigrants who came to America had sponsors, were expected to find work, and expected to receive no government aid of any kind. Unfortunately, that is no longer the case.

NumbersUSA is working to keep immigration at a manageable level. As an organization, they have built up the connections in Washington to represent the majority of Americans who do not favor amnesty for people who are here illegally. When you move someone who is here illegally to the front of the line, you deny the rights of someone who is pursuing immigration in the correct way. That is not something we want to do.

 

Ted Cruz On The Immigration Bill

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One of Ted Cruz‘s websites has some interesting details about the immigration bill working its way through Congress:

  • The Schumer/Hoeven/Corker amendment is nearly 1,200 pages long, was just filed Friday afternoon, and will be voted on this Monday. We saw with Obamacare what happens when Congress rushes to pass such unwieldy legislation.
  • The Schumer/Hoeven/Corker “border security” amendment to the deal doesn’t require that the border actually be secured, nor does it require any security enhancements before legalization occurs.
  • This legislation makes the same mistake of the 1986 amnesty — legalization today for the false promise of border security tomorrow. It will encourage more illegal immigration and must be stopped.

There is also a video posted on YouTube explaining Senator Cruz’s objections to the bill:

We need to fix our immigration system. This is not the way to do it.

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Illegal Is Now Legal

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Breitbart.com is reporting today that the Obama Administration is already granting amnesty to illegal aliens who were to be deported even if they don’t meet the standards announced last month.

The article reports:

According to ICE documents Smith {Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX)} reviewed, ICE officers are encouraged to search for those who are “apparently eligible” to not be deported, under the directive, and grant them tentative status, according to the report. 

“President Obama is granting amnesty to illegal immigrants behind Americans’ backs,” Smith said, per the Times. “Although administration officials told congressional offices that it would take 60 days to implement the president’s amnesty plan, internal ICE documents show that illegal immigrants have already benefited from it, even though there are no standards in place.”

This administration can’t even follow the policies they put in place!

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