THE DOCTRINE OF THE N.A.F.T.A. GLOBALIST DEMOCRATS IS TO SERVE THE BILLIONAIRE CLASS WITH ENDLESS WAVES OF INVADING 'CHEAP' LABOR SUBSIDIZED WITH WELFARE FUNDED BY TAXES ON MIDDLE AMERICA.
In many speeches, Mayorkas says he is building a mass migration system to deliver workers to wealthy employers and investors and “equity” to poor foreigners. The nation’s border laws are subordinate to elites’ opinion about “the values of our country,” Mayorkas claims.
Amnesty advocates behind the American Business Immigration Coalition (ABIC) are billing an event this week with six Senate and House Republicans as part of a broader effort to engage with elected Democrats and the pro-amnesty community, from corporate donors to the open borders lobby, on “building bipartisanship on immigration reform.”
On Thursday, Senators Marco Rubio (R-FL), Thom Tillis (R-NC), Susan Collins (R-ME), and John Cornyn (R-TX) and Representatives Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL) and Will Hurd (R-TX) are to participate in an ABIC event alongside Senators Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Robert Menendez (D-NJ), and Chris Coons (D-DE). The group’s website said the event is about “building bipartisanship on immigration reform” arguing that effort “is more important than ever.” It encourages attendees to hear “from elected leaders on the path forward in 2021.”
While the website frames it as such, at least one of the GOP offices participating–Rubio’s–has subsequently said his involvement is solely focused on renewing a coronavirus pandemic relief program for small businesses nationwide and has nothing to do with any broader immigration discussions. It is unclear as of now where the other Republicans stand on this matter.
The event is being hosted by the pro-amnesty, pro-mass immigration American Business Immigration Coalition which is made up of a series of business donors such as the United States Chamber of Commerce and the open borders lobby like the George Soros-funded United We Dream organization.
A full list of special interests participating in the event include:
Jon Baselice, US Chamber of Commerce Immigration Director, Al Cardenas, Shareholder – Squire Patton Boggs, Steve Choi, NYIC Senior Advisor, Alan Cramb, Illinois Institute of Technology President, Lester Crown, Henry Crown & Company Co-Chairman, Bob Dickinson, Carnival Cruise CEO Retired, Craig Duchossois, The Duchossois Group Chairman, Martin Eakes, Self Help Federal Credit Union CEO, Mike Fernandez, MBF Healthcare Partners Chairman, Don Graham, TheDream.us Chairman, Luis Gutierrez, former U.S. Representative, Dr. Carrie Besnette Hauser, Colorado Mountain College President and CEO, Marielena Hincapie, NILC Executive Director, Mellody Hobson, Ariel Investments President and Co-CEO, Josh Hoyt, Democracy Partners, Woody Hunt, Hunt Companies Senior Chairman, Mike Kaplan, Aspen Snowmass CEO, Giev Kashkooli, United Farm Workers Political Director, Bill Kunkler, CC Industries Executive VP, Bill Lucia, HMS CEO, Stan Marek, MAREK Brothers & Systems CEO, Greisa Martinez, United We Dream, Executive Director, Eva Millona, MIRA CEO, Marc Morial, The National Urban League President, Anna Morzy, Greenberg Traurig Shareholder, Ana Navarro, American Political Strategist, Penny Pritzker, former United States Secretary of Commerce, Raul Raymundo, TRP CEO, Maria Rodriguez, Florida Immigrant Coalition Executive Director, John Rowe, Exelon Chairman Emeritus, Zaher Sahloul, MedGlobal CEO, Angelica Salas, CHIRLA Executive Director, Sam Scott, Ingredion Incorporated CEO Retired, Carole Segal, Crate and Barrel Co-Founder, Gustavo Torres, CASA Executive Director, Chris Wallace, North Texan Commission President and CEO, Bob Worsley, SkyMall Founder and Arizona Republican State Senator Retired, Justin Yancey, Texas Business Leadership Council President.
A number of the Republican participants won reelection by close margins just a month ago. Specifically, Tillis won reelection in North Carolina by fewer than 96,000 votes. Likewise, Collins won reelection in Maine by fewer than 70,300 votes.
Currently, House Democrats are drafting an amnesty plan that will provide at least one subgroup of illegal aliens the ability to permanently remain in the U.S. and eventually apply for American citizenship. Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden has vowed to send an amnesty plan to the Senate in his first 100 days in office.
A handful of Republican lawmakers, including Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Cornyn, have suggested working with a Biden administration on an amnesty deal.
There are an estimated 11 to 22 million illegal aliens currently living in the U.S. This illegal population is in addition to the more than 1.2 million foreign nationals who are given green cards annually and the 1.4 million foreign nationals who are given temporary visas every year. Today, the foreign-born population of the U.S. has boomed to at least 44.5 million. By 2060, the Census Bureau projects the foreign-born population will tick up to an unprecedented 69 million should current legal immigration levels continue.
UPDATE 12/2/20 11:25 A.M. ET:
After the publication of this story, Rubio’s office expressed that it believed the framing of this event as one where broader discussions of a 2021 immigration deal were not accurate.
Rubio’s chief of staff Mike Needham tweeted that it was “fake news” and said that the senator is just prerecording a video on the need to renew the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) coronavirus relief for small businesses amid the pandemic:
This is literally fake news. We are giving a prerecorded video on the need to renew the Paycheck Protection Program. https://t.co/fc8uGzksqB
A Rubio spokesman also told Breitbart News that the senator is not participating in any discussions about broader immigration legislation but simply pushed for PPP renewal which Democrats in Congress are currently blocking. “Rubio did not participate in any immigration discussions,” the Rubio spokesman said. “He delivered a video message on the need to restart the Paycheck Protection Program, which is currently being blocked by Democrat leaders in Congress.”
The story and headline above have been updated to reflect Rubio’s office’s position on this event, specifically that his office believes is not accurate to suggest he is part of broader immigration discussions at this time and that his involvement in this event is solely focused on PPP renewal despite the amnesty group’s framing of the GOP lawmakers’ “participation” as such.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
Alejandro Mayorkas: A Portrait of the Intended Nominee for DHS Secretary
Will a Senate confirmation hearing recall troubling integrity scandals and heavy-handed re-direction on immigration law and fraud enforcement?
Feds: Plants that Hired Illegal Aliens Paid Unlawful Wages, Hired a Child…open borders…it’s all about keeping wages depressed and passing along the true cost to middle America
Former Vice President Joe Biden will nominate Alejandro Mayorkas to run the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), despite his role in creating huge Latin American migration and his involvement in several visas-for-sale scandals.
Joe Biden's pick to run the DHS immigration agency – Alejandro Mayorkas – is a political gift for the GOP, says Jessica Vaughan at CIS: "Cronyism, corruption, swampiness, and the immigration issue."https://t.co/859b16NhN4
OPEN BORDERS AND A NATION FLOODED WITH ‘CHEAP’ LABOR
Former Vice President Joe Biden will nominate Alejandro Mayorkas to run the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), despite his role in creating huge Latin American migration and his involvement in several visas-for-sale scandals.
THERE MAY BE NO GREATER THREAT TO AMERICA THAN THE PARASITIC LAWYER CLASS!
They are institutionally trained in law school to lie, steal, cheat and game the legal system on behalf of the lawyer class and the white-collar criminals they represent.
Big Tech and Big Law dominate Biden transition teams, tempering progressive hopes
"Along with Obama (LAWYER) Biden (LAWYER), Pelosi and Schumer (LAWYER) are responsible for incalculable damage done to this country over the eight years of that administration." PATRICIA McCARTHY
Add the Banksters’ rent boy Eric Holder (LAWYER) and the up and coming Swamp Empress Kamala Harris (LAWYER, SO IS HER SHADY HUSBAND)…but keep counting….(LAWYER) Brian Deese, Obama-Biden’s loot-for-Wall Street guy.
Hauser also didn’t like the prevalence of Big Law talent on the Department of Justice team, which signaled to him that the Biden administration could go soft on corporate malefactors.
Serious ethical lapses and heavy-handed management tactics
Washington, D.C. (December 1, 2020) - A new analysis by the Center for Immigration Studies examines the man tapped to become U.S. Department of Homeland Security secretary, Cuba-born Alejandro "Ali" Mayorkas. As secretary, Mayorkas would run one of the country's largest bureaucracies, with some 240,000 employees and would have far-reaching impact on all forms of legal and illegal immigration.
Mayorkas’ public service legacy features serial ethical imbroglios, a pointed de-emphasis on immigration fraud and law enforcement, and strong-arm management tactics to spike acceptances of immigration and asylum applications in disregard of eligibility.
Todd Bensman, the Center’s senior national security fellow, said, “Mayorkas has a long track record in public service, with serious ethical blemishes along the way. While the U.S. Senate may well approve a nomination on the basis of the good in his track record, lawmakers also are obliged to consider serious ethical lapses and heavy-handed management tactics that at times seemed to prize political favoritism over good governance.”
Bensman continued, “The DHS secretary appointment is one of the most important and far-reaching of the presidential cabinet posts when it comes to enforcing immigration law and setting immigration-related policy priorities. That being the case, any portrayal of Alejandro Mayorkas does not serve the public interest if it is only partial, with the redactions and omissions allowed so far.”
Mayorkas served President Barack Obama as head of USCIS from 2009-2013, and as deputy secretary for DHS from 2013-2016, before retiring to a blue-chip law firm in Washington, D.C. In October 2010, about a year after Mayorkas's appointment to head USCIS, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) penned a complaint to then-DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, which raises questions about Mayorkas's fealty to immigration and asylum law enforcement. The Grassley letter, citing anonymous employee allegations, accused the top USCIS official of laying heavy-handed pressure on career employees to squeeze out higher volumes of immigration application approvals for the agency's "customers", while undermining fraud and ineligibility detection efforts.
Following an investigation, Grassley later wrote, "Unfortunately, the evidence suggests that Director Mayorkas is fostering an environment that pressures employees to approve as many applications as possible and condones retaliation against those who dissent," he wrote.
Later a 2015 DHS Inspector General report found Mayorkas inappropriately helped companies associated with powerful Democratic Party figures reverse employment visa denials for wealthy foreign nationals. In three specific cases Mayorkas "exerted improper influence in the normal processing and adjudication" of the visas, "inserted himself in unprecedented ways" in the adjudication process, and "intervened with the career USCIS staff in ways that clearly benefited the stakeholders.
Contrary to any effort to pitch him today as an asylum fraud crusader, Mayorkas did little or nothing either to free the FDNS investigators, add to their ranks, or generate more fraud case referrals. A damning December 2015 GAO report found that FDNS asylum fraud prosecutions rarely, if ever, occurred during the Mayorkas years.
Business groups are already pushing GOP Senators to approve Alejandro Mayorkas as Joe Biden’s homeland security secretary.
The group is touting Mayorkas’ confirmation as support for “Dreamers” — the younger migrants illegally brought into the United States before 2007.
But if the GOP blocks Mayorkas from getting the top job at the Department of Homeland Security, the defeat will demonstrate broad opposition to the low-wage, high-profit economy favored by Mayorkas and his amnesty supporters, and by many of Biden’s deputies and pro-migration donors.
The November 30 letter by roughly 100 business groups and companies said:
This important and welcomed selection by President-elect Biden signals his commitment to protecting Dreamers, and we look forward to working with his administration on common sense proposals that will provide legal certainty for Dreamers and avoid significant disruptions to the American workforce and economy.
The pro-Mayorkas coalition describes itself as the “Coalition for the American Dream.” It includes many companies that have outsourced white-collar jobs to India’s visa workers, as well as companies that gain when a flood of migrant labor prevents a wage-boosting shortage of American workers.
The members include the National Association of Manufacturers, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Marriott International, Amazon, Cisco, the National Milk Producers Federation, Microsoft, Ikea, Google, Facebook, Doordash, and the National Retail Federation.
The group is backed by FWD.us, an advocacy group created by Mark Zuckerberg and other investors. The group was founded in 2013 to expand the federal government’s economic policy of importing cheap immigrant labor and welfare-aided immigrant consumers.
The Democrats are backing Mayorkas, even though there is minimal public support — and declining Democratic support — for cheap labor immigration policies. Just 19 percent of all voters support the establishment’s preference for importing foreign workers, and 66 percent prefer the populist demand for “businesses to raise [Americans’] pay and try harder to recruit non-working Americans,” according to Rasmussen Reports.
Under Trump’s reduced immigration policies, median household income jumped seven percent in 2019. Also, Trump’s populist policies helped create a huge GOP turnout in 2020, so boosting GOP seats in the House and blocking Democrat gains in state legislatures.
The business groups know their cheap labor agenda is unpopular and a threat to politicians’ reelection.
So their three-cornered strategy is to rush the amnesty through Congress as an early win for Biden, to rationalize the amnesty as a quick boost for the national economy (but not for individual workers), and to stigmatize the public opposition by insisting the amnesty repays a moral debt to illegal migrants.
“One of the things we all experienced during [the tenure of President Barack Obama] was that immigration was pushed for later,” according to Alida Garcia, the vice president of advocacy for the investors at FWD.us. “The later you go, the harder everything gets because [legislators] people prioritize their own reelection,” she told CNN for a November 29 article.
“This is a must-prioritize now as both an economic driver for this nation that is dealing with a crisis. … And a moral driver after the harm that’s been done to immigrants by the Trump administration,” Garcia told CNN.
Mayorkas’ nomination will be reviewed by the Senate’s homeland defense committee, likely chaired by Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio.
Portman is up for reelection in 2022. and voted against Mayorkas in 2013. The other GOP members include Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky.; James Lankford, R-Okla; Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah; Sen Mike Enzi, R-Wyo.; Rick Scott, R-Fla.; and Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo.
Mayorkas’ questionable record includes several visas-for-sale scandals, the disregard of migrant fraud, and his encouragement of the huge migration of Latin American migrants into U.S. jobs and neighborhoods.
The man tapped to become U.S. Department of Homeland Security secretary, Cuba-born Alejandro "Ali" Mayorkas, would wear many hats running one of the country's largest bureaucracies. With some 240,000 employees, the DHS conglomeration created after 9/11 melds counterterrorism intelligence, emergency management, cybersecurity, the U.S. Coast Guard, and the U.S. Secret Service. But the planned nomination also portends far-reaching impacts on all forms of legal and illegal immigration.
Already, the 61-year-old Mayorkas has shown early interest in an oversight role over U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CPB), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and the agency he once headed, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).
But despite largely laudatory media reviews of a Mayorkas appointment, his public service legacy features serial ethical imbroglios, a pointed de-emphasis on immigration fraud and law enforcement, and strong-arm management tactics to spike acceptances of immigration and asylum applications in disregard of eligibility.
While media organizations may have trod lightly over these trouble spots, a Senate confirmation process required for a DHS secretary nomination likely won't, a public interest that argues for re-visitation and a more complete picture of how Mayorkas may manage this policy area.
The son of Jewish-Cuban refugees who fled the 1959 communist revolution, Mayorkas served President Bill Clinton as an appointed U.S. attorney in California from 1998 through 2001, President Barack Obama as head of USCIS from 2009-2013, and as deputy secretary for DHS from 2013-2016, before retiring to a blue-chip law firm in Washington, D.C. He served perhaps most controversially as head of USCIS, the huge immigration-benefits management agency that oversees asylum approval processes, a fraud detection corps, residency and visa application processes, the E-Verify and SAVE immigration status-checking systems, and the citizenship naturalization process.
In their initial coverage, Politico, the Washington Post, the New York Times, National Public Radio, and other media organizations quoted former friends, colleagues, and Democratic figures praising Mayorkas for his experience and centrist politics. But the exuberant coverage largely tokenized several ethically questionable moments in Mayorkas's public service career dating to his California U.S. attorney days, leaving an incomplete portrait.
For instance, in its article about the prospective Mayorkas nomination, the Washington Post noted that only "Republicans" are likely to bring up a 2015 DHS Inspector General report that found Mayorkas inappropriately helped companies associated with powerful Democratic Party figures reverse employment visa denials for wealthy foreign nationals. The Post did not elaborate on its brief description of the scandal.
However, the public interest in that matter and others to be described, as well as Mayorkas's unconventional actions with regard to legal and illegal immigration, arguably extends beyond "Republicans" to everyone in Congress with a vote on the nomination, and to anyone who cares about corruption or how immigration and border security policy develops next.
Views on Immigrants and Immigration
Where Mayorkas stands on the core issues should not be hard to guess, given that Biden nominated him with a clear agenda. Biden has promised to reverse most Trump deterrence-focused policies for those likely to incentivize legal and illegal immigration. Biden, for instance, has promised to end deportations for his first 100 days, suspend construction on the southern border wall, reopen the severely abused asylum system to all comers, reduce detentions, and work toward amnesties for all of the illegally present.
As to where Mayorkas fits on the political spectrum, one tell is that no Republican voted to confirm him as DHS deputy secretary in 2013. A clue as to where on the open-borders spectrum to place him is that some of the biggest fans of a Mayorkas appointment are those who favor the lightest possible immigration enforcement touch, the most expansive application of asylum law, and the entrance of the greatest number of legal or illegal immigrants, press reporting and social media show.
Mayorkas was the architect of Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy that legalized some 700,000 mostly adult "dreamers" who arrived in the United States illegally as minors. Back in civilian life, where he associated with pro-immigration groups like the American Immigration Lawyers Association, which celebrated the nomination announcement, Mayorkas continued to speak out in support of granting amnesty to dreamers.
Emblematic of the partisan divide certain to persist on immigration after a Mayorkas confirmation were other congratulatory endorsements by migrant advocate groups, such as a quote reflecting the joy of Janet Murguia, president of UnidosUS (originally the National Council of La Raza), which opposes what it terms "indiscriminate" immigration enforcement. She told the New York Times that "after four long, dark years" of the Trump administration and "a general contempt for Latinos from the highest office in the land, Mayorkas's nomination signals a new day for the Department of Homeland Security and for all our country."
In post-service civilian life, Mayorkas served as a board member for the refugee resettlement agency HIAS, which advocates for higher numbers and liberal application of asylum regulations and against detention. HIAS was among many groups that also congratulated Mayorkas for the pending appointment.
Mayorkas wasted no time telegraphing which part of the vast DHS portfolio interested him: immigration and asylum.
"When I was very young, the United States provided my family and me a place of refuge," Mayorkas wrote on Twitter following Biden's announcement about him. "Now, I have been nominated to be the DHS Secretary and oversee the protection of all Americans and those who flee persecution in search of a better life for themselves and their loved ones."
Later, he messaged his intention to further the department's work to "advance our proud history as a country of welcome."
While none of these policy attitudes should surprise Washington insiders, a record of unconventional past actions suggests the extent to which the next Mayorkas incarnation may emphasize opening the gates wider rather than scrupulously enforcing the letter of immigration law.
Pressuring Employees to "Get to Yes" on Visas Applications, Forget Fraud
In October 2010, about a year after Mayorkas's appointment to head USCIS, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) penned a complaint to then-DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano. Its contents, though a decade old now, raise questions about Mayorkas's fealty to immigration and asylum law enforcement.
The Grassley letter, citing anonymous employee allegations, accused the top USCIS official of laying heavy-handed pressure on career employees to squeeze out higher volumes of immigration application approvals for the agency's "customers", while undermining fraud and ineligibility detection efforts.
After receiving an "inadequate response" from Mayorkas, Grassley's office interviewed seven employees, examined hundreds of pages of supporting documents, and presented the results in the letter to Secretary Napolitano.
"Unfortunately, the evidence suggests that Director Mayorkas is fostering an environment that pressures employees to approve as many applications as possible and condones retaliation against those who dissent," he wrote.
Among the inquiry's chief findings:
Mayorkas had become "visibly agitated" during a visit to USCIS's California offices when told employees there wanted to root out fraud. "Why would you be focusing on that instead of approvals?" he reputedly demanded. A witness said "his message was offensive to a lot of officers who are trained to detect fraud."
At a management conference, Mayorkas directed top officials to find ways always to "get to yes" regarding "customer" immigrants who filed visa applications. He told his subordinates to "look at petitions from the perspective of the customer" and that the goal was "zero complaints", implying that approvals were the means to that end.
At a conference in Landsdowne, Va., Mayorkas said there were some "managers with black spots on their hearts" who can't see their way to grant benefits and that he was "dealing" with them and also subordinates "too close" to them, with immediate involuntary re-assignments.
The California USCIS office was told to abandon an important anti-fraud measure that checked for high-risk applicants on a government database, and fraud specialists had to stop investigating such applications.
Perhaps as preemptive strike against any recollection of Grassley's 2010 letter, the latest media reporting about the Mayorkas DHS secretary nomination praises his ostensible track record of going after immigration fraud.
The Washington Post story allowed an unchallenged quote from John Sandweg, a former acting ICE director who served with Mayorkas, saying "One of the things Mayorkas was proudest of creating was the USCIS Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate [FDNS], to emphasize that vetting was crucial in giving out immigration benefits."
In fact, the FDNS was created as a small unit in 2004 with the creation of USCIS after 9/11 exposed severe systemic flaws easily exploited by terrorists. Further, while he may have signed an order to upgrade FDNS from a unit to a directorate, Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports about rampant asylum fraud and lack of prosecution during the Mayorkas years beg to differ with claims that he was ever interested in effectively vetting applications.
A damning December 2015 GAO report found that FDNS asylum fraud prosecutions rarely, if ever, occurred during the Mayorkas years. It found that half of the eight USCIS field divisions had referred either one fraud case to U.S. attorney's offices from 2010 to 2014 or none at all. One office reported that not a single referral had been accepted in the prior two years. Another reported that its U.S. attorney had accepted no asylum fraud referrals since 2010.
Besides strong-arming USCIS employees to "get to yes" instead of valid denials or fraud investigations, another reason for this dismal showing during Mayorka's 2010-2013 USCIS years was that the very FDNS directorate heralded in the Post story was never allowed to refer cases to prosecutors, subpoena witnesses, or even carry guns.
Under a 2008 memorandum of understanding that Mayorkas would have freshly inherited, the FDNS asylum fraud unit was required always to refer fraud cases to ICE Homeland Security Investigations officers, making them subordinate to ICE's enforcement priorities and limited resources. In practice, asylum fraud cases had to compete with many more attention-getting types of cases, such as human smuggling and trafficking, transnational gangs, and intellectual property theft. Even had the FDNS officers been allowed to do their own asylum fraud investigation jobs, there were only 34 of the shackled officers by 2015 to cover eight field offices nationwide, which processed hundreds of thousands of cases annually, the GAO report found.
Contrary to any effort to pitch him today as an asylum fraud crusader, Mayorkas did little or nothing either to free the FDNS investigators, add to their ranks, or generate more fraud case referrals.
In his 2010 letter, Grassley asked for documents and data that would help verify the allegations, but nothing that came of the request stalled Mayorkas's fortunes. He served several more years, his standing among Democratic leaders serving him well through a far more serious ethics investigation by the DHS Office of Inspector General.
The Inspector General's Investigation of Mayorkas
The DHS Office of Inspector General (OIG) investigation centered around Mayorkas's alleged interference in the already fraud-riddled and abused EB-5 visa program by which wealthy foreigners can essentially achieve U.S. residency and eventual citizenship if they invest $500,000 (raised since his tenure to $900,000) in the U.S.
The OIG case launched in 2012 on the strength of "an extraordinary number of DHS employees" who came forward to report that Mayorkas was providing "special access and special favors" to a handful of EB-5 visa applicants who were wealthy foreign national associates of powerful U.S. Democratic figures and office-holders doing the asking.
Many of the investors seeking EB-5 visas were Chinese nationals hoping to sink millions into:
1.Film projects with connections to former Democratic Pennsylvania Governor Edward Rendell, the mayor of Los Angeles, and Hollywood businessmen in late 2011.
2.A hotel and casino project in Las Vegas that was being pushed by U.S. Democratic Sen. Harry Reid in 2013 on behalf of some law clients of the senator's son, Rory.
3.An industrial investment fund's proposed hybrid vehicle factory in Virginia promoted by former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe and Hillary Clinton's brother, Anthony Rodham, from 2011 through 2013.
The OIG concluded that in these three cases Mayorkas "exerted improper influence in the normal processing and adjudication" of the visas, "inserted himself in unprecedented ways" in the adjudication process, and "intervened with the career USCIS staff in ways that clearly benefited the stakeholders.
"In each of these three instances, but for Mr. Mayorkas's intervention", the report summary noted, "the matter would have been decided differently."
None of the visa applicants would ever consent to OIG interviews, nor were the investigators ever able to find Mayorkas's emails and internal communications.
Mayorkas has always disputed the findings of improper intervention, saying he took a hands-on approach in cases only to strengthen the program's integrity.
Commutation of a Drug Trafficker's Sentence
A 2001 episode from Mayorkas's last days as a U.S. attorney in the central California district has less to do with immigration, but is relevant in that it speaks to an apparent willingness to bend rules for the Democratic Party powerful.
Mayorkas allegedly used the weight of his office and access to the Clinton White House to request commutation of a convicted drug dealer's federal prison sentence. President Clinton followed through with the commutation of a 15-year cocaine-trafficking sentence in 1994 for Carlos Vignali, Jr.
The intervention happened after Vignali's Los Angeles real-estate developer father, Horacio, rounded up an array of powerful Democratic political and civic leaders to pressure Mayorkas to help the cause, a 2002 congressional investigative report concluded.
Among those the senior Vignali enlisted was another Hillary Clinton brother, Hugh Rodham, who received $204,000 to successfully connect White House staff to Vignali's network of Democratic leaders in Los Angeles.
"U.S. Attorney Alejandro Mayorkas provided critical support for the Vignali commutation that was inappropriate, given his position," the congressional report stated. "Mayorkas, the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, was asked by Horacio Vignali to call the White House in support of his son's clemency petition. Mayorkas then called the White House about the Vignali commutation" and later conceded that "his call conveyed support for the Vignali commutation ... despite his knowledge that the prosecutors responsible for the Vignali case opposed clemency."
Perhaps more troubling, during his 2013 Senate hearing, Mayorkas provided lawmakers with an alternative set of facts when asked. He testified under oath that the Clinton White House initiated the phone call, not Mayorkas, and that "I informed them that I did not support the commutation."
Mayorkas declined interview requests for a 2015 Wall Street Journal story about the "conflicting versions" he provided different government overseers.
A More Complete Portrait
Mayorkas' total service need not be judged entirely by the blemishes on his public service record. His relatively unmarred three years as DHS's deputy secretary expanded Mayorkas's range of expertise beyond immigration to, for instance, cybersecurity and domestic counterterrorism, his particular interest in funneling security grants to combat anti-semitism much-praised.
But all indications so far show that Mayorkas would spend time and effort on his immigration portfolio if confirmed. Integrity and ethics issues like the unrelated Vigliano commutation episode when Mayorkas was a U.S. attorney still need to be taken into account because they transcend any particular policy area. The integrity problems and management tactics of Mayorkas's not-so-distant past demonstrate his problematic susceptibility to bend convention to external lobbying. Given the stakes invested in leadership of such a large and consequential public agency as DHS, these all ought to be properly recounted and assessed.
Joe Biden’s Allies Warn of Blue-Collar Migrant Invasion
Former Vice President Joe Biden’s pro-migration policies are inviting another blue-collar migration flood across the southern border, say his Democrat allies.
Biden has promised to reverse many of President Donald Trump’s pro-American policies, but “if Biden hits reverse too hard, it could cost him politically,” read a November 24 column by Noah Smith, a pro-migration columnist for Bloomberg:
In economic terms, a few hundred thousand Central American migrants will do little to hurt the U.S., but their presence will rile up law-and-order voters who bristle at the notion of people crossing the border illegally or skipping out on asylum hearings. That could hurt Biden with constituencies like Hispanic voters who live in the Texas border counties that swung hard to Trump in 2020.
“There are very real risks that sudden changes in policy could generate a surge of unauthorized migration: Recent experience has taught us that changing U.S. policies sends powerful signals to would-be migrants — and to their smugglers,” says a November 17 article by Andrew Selee, the president of the pro-migration Migration Policy Institute.
“I don’t think they’re going to be able to stop that,” said Jessica Vaughan, at the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors curbs on migration.
For example, she said, Biden has selected Alejandro Mayorkas to run the immigration system, despite Mayorkas’ role under President Barack Obama in welcoming migrants and triggering Obama’s huge Latin American migration that Trump finally stopped in early 2020.
Mayorkas will have a hard time deterring migration because millions of migrants — and their coyotes — know he wants to let them into jobs in the United States, Vaughan told Breitbart News on November 23. For example, Mayorkas pressured immigration officials to ignore fraud and to rubber-stamp migrants’ applications, she said, adding, “He said that [immigration] officers who refused applicants have black spots on their hearts and that they’re doing something wrong, and should be approving all these applications.”
The migration pressure will grow once coronavirus vaccinations allow Mexico and other regional countries to permit movement, warned Joseph Chamie, a population expert and a former director of the United Nations Population Division. He wrote on November 19 in TheHill.com:
Whether you’re for it, against it or indifferent about it, the migration surge is coming. Millions of men, women and children in developing countries are desperately seeking to emigrate to escape poverty, hunger, unemployment, violence, crime, human rights abuse, and environmental crises.
…
With the incoming government’s proposed changes to immigration policies, especially with respect to asylum seekers, undocumented migrants, migrating families and unaccompanied minors, a big migration inflow along the U.S southern border should not come as a surprise.
The coming surge of migrants can be expected to overwhelm immigration systems, including border control, security vetting, the courts, legal representation, medical clearance, shelter and quarantine facilities and operating costs. Particularly challenging for the authorities is deciding on how best to deal with migrating family units, unaccompanied minors and asylum seekers.
Biden will try to chart a course between his many pro-migration allies — including the many millions of foreigners who want to get into the United States — and millions of worried swing-voters, according to Smith.
Smith — who accepts the claim that Biden sincerely tried to exclude migrants when he was serving as vice-president — wrote November 24 that Biden:
will probably try to accept asylum seekers from Central America at a slow and ordered pace. Detention will probably persist, in a much more humane form. And Biden may even negotiate new, though less rigid, agreements to keep some asylum seekers at home as the administration tries to improve living conditions in those countries.
But the Democrats are eager to welcome more migrants, said Vaughan, and they know how to hide that unpopular welcome under loud promises to fix a “broken immigration system”:
Many people like to complain about an immigration system that is supposedly “broken,” but it’s not broken at all when someone like Mayorkas is at the helm and can [annually] wave in more than a million legal immigrants, nearly a million guest workers, and crank out a million work permits. That’s not broken — that’s working pretty well if what you want is unlimited immigration.
Under Obama and Biden, administration officials carefully opened many small and hard-to-see loopholes in the border — and disarmed border agencies with many other regulations. That covert policy gradually and deliberately let millions of blue-collar Latin Americans into the United States, so boosting business allies.
But the inevitable pressure from millions of would-be migrants flooded their stealthy pro-migration policies, causing a popular pushback in 2014 that set the stage for Trump’s surprise jump into presidential politics.
Like other white-collar pro-migration activists, Selee’s favored solution to the migration problem is to make it legal, regardless of the predictable impact on blue-collar Americans.
He would expand the legal inflow of foreign workers, asylum seekers, and refugees that will cut blue-collar wages and raise blue-collar housing prices, saying:
First and foremost, this new [migration] architecture needs to include some sort of labor pathway for Central Americans to do seasonal work in the United States.
…
identifying those in danger in their home countries either for protection in-country or for resettlement as refugees in the United States and other countries, efforts that are done on a small scale already but could be vastly expanded with the right attention and resources.
“[A] Biden administration can transition towards a new migration management architecture that creates opportunities for seasonal work and humanitarian protection, while investing in a better future for the region as a whole,” Selee concluded.
Rasmussen shows that some post-Trump Biden voters are feeling freer to protect blue-collar Americans from cheap-labor migration. That's decent, but it may not matter if legislators think those Biden voters can be pushed to back pro-amnesty Dems in 2022. https://t.co/VSPGVnkDim
