Democrats, immigration activists, and business leaders cheered President Obama’s executive actions on immigration. However, as quickly as Obama moved to block millions of illegal immigrants from deportation, a future president could not only revoke Obama’s orders but also implement dozens of pro-immigration enforcement actions that would make former executive amnesty cheerleaders grimace.
A new report from the Center for Immigration Studies released Monday, details 79 executive actions a succeeding president could take to beef up immigration enforcement, national security, and protections for American workers.
According to CIS, their recommendations will restore “credibility” to the nation’s immigration system.
“Civil rights pioneer Barbara Jordan noted that credibility in immigration policy is simple: ‘Those who should get in, get in; those who should be kept out, are kept out; and those who should not be here will be required to leave.’ These 79 recommendations would be a huge step toward that goal,” Mark Krikorian, CIS executive director, said Monday.
The list of executive actions include detailed recommendations for reducing immigration fraud, preventing admission of potential terrorists, stoping visa overstays, diminishing the negative impacts of guest worker programs on American workers, enforcing current immigration law, cracking down on sanctuary cities, and more aggressive action to seek out and remove illegal immigrants.
The group’s report notes that there is one significant limitation to its list, namely their inability to predict any future executive actions Obama might take during his last year in office when he does not face reelection.
“Certainly the fear of future lawsuits, or even those pending such as the action before the Supreme Court, will not likely deter him since they become some other president’s burden, no matter which party that president represents,” the report reads.
Some highlights from CIS’s recommendations include:
-Rescind all outstanding “prosecutorial discretion” policies that result in systematic non-enforcement of the law;
-Eliminate the “Priority Enforcement Program” and reinstitute Secure Communities;
-Restore regular assessments for fraud in USCIS benefits programs (green cards, etc.);
-Deny asylum to any alien who could have sought asylum in countries through which he has traveled en route to the United States;
-Reduce the standard period short-term visitors are permitted to stay to 30 days (down from 180 days) unless the traveler provides documentation or other justification for a longer stay;
-Require at least 20 percent of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent hours dedicated to locating and arresting visa overstays;
-Direct executive branch agencies to deny allocation of H (work) visas to employers that lay off citizens or resident aliens in order to replace them with foreign workers. Direct additionally that the visas be revoked should layoffs of pre-existing workers occur within six months after arrival of H visa workers;
-Direct that no unaccompanied minors be turned over to relatives who are illegally in the United States unless the relatives surrender themselves for processing and initiation of immigration court proceedings;
-Selectively prosecute relatives who pay to smuggle unaccompanied minors into the United States;
-Require that a condition of all federal grant monies given to state or local governments is that they, and the contracting employers or sub-recipients of that grant money, whether as a pass-through or for any other purpose, must use E-Verify for all their employees;
-Require DHS and its subordinate agencies to not issue “certifications” of criminal aliens in state or local jails of sanctuary jurisdictions for purposes of the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program (SCAAP), thus removing the underpinning by which the Department of Justice provides millions of dollars in federal SCAAP funding to these non-cooperating jurisdictions;
-Cease issuing “exemptions” (waivers) to known terrorists and supporters of terrorism, individually or by group, that permit them to enter the United States as immigrants, asylees, or refugees;
-Eliminate the current provision that disregards the wages of illegal aliens in the household in order to determine eligibility for food stamps, leading to families that include illegal aliens often getting more in food stamps than comparable citizen or legal-resident families.