Pro-amnesty advocates, led by Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL), are looking for the next group of people they can label as “DREAMers” to grant them temporary amnesty or more leniency under the country’s immigration laws.
A day before House Democrats launched a discharge petition to try to force a vote on comprehensive immigration reform legislation that would grant amnesty to all of the country’s estimated eleven million immigrants Wednesday, Jeh Johnson, the Department of Homeland Security Secretary, met with 20 pro-amnesty groups to discuss ways in which deportations can be eased.
Gutierrez and pro-amnesty advocates have indicated they would put pressure on Obama to ease deportations if Congress does not pass amnesty legislation this year by urging Obama to use executive actions like he did to implement the deferred action program in 2012, which granted temporary work visas to some illegal immigrants who were under 30 years of age, came to the country before they were 16, and met other requirements.
According to BuzzFeed, Gutierrez “has begun putting together a new strategy: defining the next group of undocumented immigrants that would be politically acceptable for executive action, in the same way DREAMers were when Obama announced deferred action in 2012.”
Among those who may be be the next “DREAMers” are “the parents of U.S. citizens and families with an undocumented immigrant who is also a member of the U.S. military.”
According to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, “an estimated 200,000 deportees in a two-year period were reported to be the parents of U.S. citizens, most of whom were born and raised in the United States.”
Johnson met with representatives from 20 pro-amnesty organizations, and the Department of Homeland Security said that the meeting was “part of Secretary Johnson’s focus on the effective and sensible enforcement of our nation’s immigration laws, including the ongoing review to assess how the Department of Homeland Security can conduct enforcement more humanely within the confines of the law.”
During the meeting, Johnson also “underscored his focus on supporting the passage of commonsense immigration reform this year” – which he said “remains the only path to fixing our broken immigration system.”
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Tuesday that it was “shocking that the Department of Homeland Security, charged with enforcing our laws, would meet with amnesty groups to discuss ways to further defy and dismantle federal immigration law.”
“Yet, Secretary Johnson has not met with his own ICE officers’ union and its courageous members who have spoken out to document the unlawful directives they are forced to follow,” Sessions continued. “Mr. Johnson would do well to remember the oath he took to uphold the law.”
Sessions also released a report that debunked the myth that Obama was the so-called “Deporter-in-Chief.” The analysis, as Breitbart News’s Matthew Boyle noted, found that “fully 98 percent of individuals deported from the United States in 2013 were either criminals, apprehended while illegally crossing the border, or had been previously deported.”
The three-page “Critical Alert” document also “found three executive actions by President Barack Obama providing amnesty to groups of illegal aliens meant that virtually no one who did not meet other criteria beyond simply being in the country illegal was deported.”
The report also stated:
The Administration’s priorities have therefore provided an executive amnesty not only to the great majority of the 12 million living here illegally today (including even the most recent arrivals) but to those who will violate immigration law tomorrow. It is an open invitation for a future immigrant to overstay a visa, or to enter the U.S. illegally, knowing that they will be immune from enforcement as long as they avoid being convicted of a felony or other serious crime once here.
DHS has declared to foreign visitors, would-be visa overstays, and future illegal immigrants across the world that immigration law will almost surely not apply unless you are a.) physically caught crossing the border (a non-issue for overstays) or b.) caught committing a serious crime while in the U.S.
Yet pro-amnesty groups want even more leniency, amnesty, and visas. If comprehensive immigration legislation passes and doubles and triples the number of work permits and visas, there will inevitably be even more parents and siblings who would qualify for various amnesty provisions should Gutierrez get his way. Currently, a whopping 40% of all illegal immigrants have overstayed their visas.
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