OBAMA FLIPS OFF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE... again!

MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.com

Agency weighs skirting Congress on immigration
By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS, Associated Press Writer 23 mins ago
WASHINGTON – The Obama administration, unable to push an immigration overhaul through Congress, is considering ways it could go around lawmakers to allow undocumented immigrants to stay in the United States, according to an agency memo.
The internal draft written by officials at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services outlines ways that the government could provide "relief" to illegal immigrants — including delaying deportation for some, perhaps indefinitely, or granting green cards to others — in the absence of legislation revamping the system.
It's emerging as chances fade in this election year for a measure President Barack Obama favors to put the nation's estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants on a path to legal status, and as debate rages over an Arizona law targeting people suspected of being in the country illegally.
The 11-page internal memo, written in April to the agency's director, says: "This memorandum offers administrative relief options to promote family unity, foster economic growth, achieve significant process improvements and reduce the threat of removal for certain individuals present in the United States without authorization."
It goes on: "In the absence of comprehensive immigration reform, USCIS can extend benefits and/or protections to many individuals or groups."
The memo provoked a backlash by Republicans who called it evidence that Obama is looking for ways of relaxing immigration policies without political consensus to enact a new law.
"The document provides an additional basis for our concerns that the administration will go to great lengths to circumvent Congress and unilaterally execute a backdoor amnesty plan," said Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, who obtained and circulated the memo. "The problem remains that if you reward illegality, you get more of it."
Grassley led a group of conservative GOP senators who wrote to Obama in June asking him to promise that the administration wouldn't use its authority to "change the current position of a large group of illegal aliens already in the United States."
The Iowan's staff said the group has not received a response.
"Now we find out the truth: while saying one thing to the public, the Obama administration is scheming to ensure that immigration laws are not enforced," said Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee.
Christopher Bentley, a spokesman for the agency, said the internal document "should not be equated with official action or policy," and represented only "deliberation and exchange of ideas."
"We continue to maintain that comprehensive bipartisan legislation, coupled with smart, effective enforcement, is the only solution to our nation's immigration challenges," he said in a statement.
Still, the memo makes clear that even without such a bill, immigration officials have identified a variety of ways to relax U.S. policy to allow more undocumented immigrants who might otherwise face deportation to stay in the country. Among the options outlined is expanding the use of "deferred action" — in which the government can use its discretion to halt a deportation indefinitely, usually for an urgent humanitarian reason.
"While it is theoretically possible to grant deferred action to an unrestricted number of unlawfully present individuals, doing so would likely be controversial, not to mention expensive," the memo says. Instead, officials suggest using the option for certain groups, such as tens of thousands of high school graduates who have been brought up in the U.S. and plan to attend college or serve in the armed forces.
Democrats and Republicans have repeatedly tried to push through legislation — known as the "Dream Act" — to cover those students.
"To be clear," Bentley said, the government "will not grant deferred action or humanitarian parole to the nation's entire illegal immigrant population."
Another option included in the document is to allow more illegal immigrants to receive "parole-in-place" status. This would let them stay in the United States while they seek legal status.
The document discusses applying both those options to spouses of active duty military personnel, for instance.
It also suggests expanding the definition of "extreme hardship" for exceptions in immigration cases — a prospect that alarmed critics who said it could lower the bar so virtually any undocumented person could meet it.
And the memo suggests allowing people who entered the United States illegally and were granted so-called "Temporary Protected Status" because of a crisis in their home countries to stay and get permanent legal residency.
The memo notes that this would be a change in long-standing policy, and says, "Opening this pathway will help thousands of applicants obtain lawful permanent residence without having to leave the U.S."
Some proponents of revamping the immigration system said the document simply points out ways the agency can fix old and outdated practices that separate families and hurt workers and employers.
Writing on the Immigration Policy Center's blog, Director Mary Giovagnoli, a former immigration official, said, "Good for you, USCIS, for trying to do what it can within that broken system."
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Hans A. von Spakovsky
Law-Enforcement-Free Sanctuaries

The Obama administration will sue Arizona for trying to help Washington enforce federal immigration laws, but flatly rejects the notion of suing sanctuary cities that blatantly defy those same laws. That announcement two weeks ago revealed the hypocrisy and utter contempt for the rule of law rampant in Eric Holder’s Justice Department.
It was the latest example of the Department letting partisan politics, rather than the interests of justice and the impartial enforcement of the law, drive its legal decisions. In this instance, it both threatens national security and undermines public confidence in our legal system.
The very weakness of the Department’s legal arguments in the Arizona suit betrays its political genesis. As the brief filed on behalf of Arizona by nine other states persuasively argues, Arizona is not interfering with federal authority: it has neither created new categories of aliens nor attempted to independently determine the immigration status of aliens. Arizona’s law simply requires local law enforcement officers to check the immigration status of individuals arrested for other reasons. This is exactly the regulatory scheme of concurrent enforcement envisioned by federal immigration law.
The Justice Department’s suit directly contradicts the 2005 Supreme Court decision in Muehler v. Mena. In that case, all nine justices upheld the right of local police officers to question a detained individual’s immigration status while a search warrant was being executed. The suit also flies in the face of Estrada v. Rhode Island, in which the First Circuit Court of Appeals this February upheld a state trooper’s questioning of immigration status during a traffic stop. This is the exact policy being implemented in Arizona.
Federal courts have long upheld the power of state law enforcement officers to arrest those who violate federal law, as long as it is also a violation of state law, includingimmigration laws. The inherent authority of local police to arrest immigration violators was outlined in 2002 in a legal memorandum issued by the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel. Yet Attorney General Holder has filed a lawsuit making claims completely at odds with an opinion issued by his own department.
Holder’s suit also conflicts directly with federal immigration law. The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (8 U.S.C. §1373) specifically mandates that no federal, state, or local government can “prohibit, or in any way restrict, any government entity or official from sending to, or receiving from, the Immigration and Naturalization Service [now Immigration and Customs Enforcement or ICE], information regarding the citizenship or immigration status, lawful or unlawful, of any individual,” a provision upheld by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in 1999. Congress wanted local governments to get information on immigration status from the federal government – and that is exactly what the Arizona law requires for anyone arrested in the state. Yet Holder is trying to prevent Arizona officials from checking “the citizenship or immigration status” of “any individual.”
Now we’re awaiting a ruling by a federal judge on the Justice Department’s request for a temporary injunction to stop the law from going into effect on Thursday. It’s clear, though, that the only way that judge could possibly rule in the Department’s favor is by ignoring the law and this precedent.
Justice Department spokesman Tracy Schmaler asserts that Arizona is “actively” interfering with federal law while sanctuary cities are just not using their resources to enforce federal law. This bogus claim displays fundamental ignorance of these federal legal requirements. Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary committee and the chief author of the 1996 immigration law, rightly calls it “absurd.” Cities like San Francisco not only do not enforce federal immigration laws, some violate it by protecting aliens from deportation and refusing to cooperate with or provide information to immigration officials.
As the nine states note in their brief, the Justice Department is trying to negate the “preexisting power of the States to verify a person’s immigration status and similarly seeks to reject the assistance that the States can lawfully provide to the Federal government.” Holder’s claim that Arizona is interfering with federal power to regulate immigration is near frivolous.
Arizona simply requires that law enforcement personnel (1) ascertain the immigration status of people they have lawfully detained for some other reason and (2) report to the federal government the presence of any detainee determined to be here illegally. If the Obama administration wants to ignore that information and reject that assistance, it has that option. The only possible “interference” with federal power is the risk that the feds might be publicly embarrassed by a policy of non-enforcement. Apparently the White House and DOJ consider embarrassment a federal offense.
Holder makes one further -- yet equally absurd -- claim: that by trying to deter the movement of illegal aliens into Arizona, the state is restricting interstate commerce and thus violates the Commerce Clause. How can deterring the entry of people who have no legal right to enter possibly violate interstate commerce? It is the same as saying that -- notwithstanding federal laws that bar importation of heroin -- a state that busts heroin traffickers is flouting the Commerce Clause.
Federal law stipulates that any person who “conceals, harbors, or shields from detection, or attempts to conceal, harbor, or shield from detection,” an illegal alien is committing a crime. It is also criminal just to “encourage” residence by illegal aliens. Yet sanctuary cities like San Francisco have enacted formal policies that embrace all these illegal acts. Such policies lead directly to further crimes, such as the vicious murder of a father and his two sons on a San Francisco street. The killer was an illegal alien with two prior felony convictions -- yet on neither occasion did San Francisco authorities notify the feds of his presence. Had they done so, he would not have been able to gun down Tony Bologna, 48, and his sons Michael, 20, and Matthew, 16, as they sat in their car on June 16, 2008.
Holder’s refusal to sue sanctuary cities is an abrogation of his responsibility as the nation’s chief federal law enforcement officer. Unlike Arizona, many of these cities have policies that violate federal law.
The Obama administration claims Arizona’s law will “disrupt federal immigration enforcement.” But the only thing it could possibly disrupt is federal non-enforcement. As the elections approach, Holder’s suit may help gin up enthusiasm among the president’s more radical political allies, such as La Raza. But using the law enforcement powers of the federal government to achieve political ends is a dangerous abuse of power.