Illegal Alien Parents to Benefit from President's DREAM Act Decree
Lost in the media frenzy surrounding
President Obama's decision to administratively implement the DREAM Act is the
Administration's plans to also grant a reprieve to the illegal alien parents
who brought them here in violation of U.S. immigration law. In doing so, the Administration is
directly contradicting its own public relations campaign — and that of amnesty
advocates nationwide — which has portrayed its new policy as a way to provide
"a degree of relief" to "innocent young kids." (See White
House transcript,
June 15, 2012; to read more about the President's "deferred action"
policy, see FAIR's Legislative Update, June 19, 2012)
The
Administration's decision to not deport the illegal alien parents of so-called
DREAMers was revealed by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano during a
CNN interview. Here is the exchange between CNN Anchorman Wolf Blitzer and
Secretary Napolitano:
BLITZER: What about the parents of these children? The children
come forward now, they identify themselves. Should the parents be concerned
that potentially they could be deported? They would now be identified as
illegal immigrants.
NAPOLITANO: No. We are not going to do that. We have
internally set it up so that the parents are not referred for immigration
enforcement if the young person comes in for deferred action. However, the
parents are not qualified for deferred action. This is for the young people who
meet the criteria that we've set forth. (CNN transcript,
June 15, 2012)
While
Napolitano makes the distinction that the illegal alien parents will not
qualify for "deferred action," the Administration's decision not to
deport them essentially amounts to the same thing. The only major difference is
that if the Department of Homeland Security simply administratively closes the
parents' cases, it is uncertain whether it will grant the parents work
authorization.
As if
the President's new deferred action policy were not troubling enough itself,
the decision not to deport the illegal alien parents of DREAMers could triple
the number of illegal aliens who benefit from it. Excluding parents, the Pew
Hispanic Center estimates that at least 1.4 million illegal aliens would
qualify for deferred action under the President's new program. (See
Pew Hispanic Center report, June
15, 2012) But with the Administration's acknowledgment that it will no longer
deport the illegal alien parents of DREAMers, the size of the President's
amnesty program could triple, or perhaps even quadruple, when fraudulent
applications are taken into account.
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