immigrants

A new "public health fund" created under Obamacare has turned into a political slush fund, financing projects that have little to do with providing affordable health care to Americans, according to a senior House lawmaker, former Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith. 

In a blistering letter to House Appropriations Committee Chairman Harold Rogers, Rep. Smith, a 10-term Texas Republican, wrote that the Prevention and Public Health Fund created under the 2010 healthcare overhaul is being used to finance television ads promoting amnesty programs for illegal aliens.

Smith pointed to a report by CNS News that the Department of Health and Human Services gave a $15 million grant to an organization called the California Endowment, a vocal advocate for Obamacare. Newsbusters (a media watchdog group which, like CNS News, is part of the Media Research Center) reported that one advertisement sponsored by the California Endowment which aired on the Spanish-language television outlet Univision "focuses not on health care, but rather on reminding undocumented [illegal] immigrants to renew their Deferred Action for Child Arrivals (DACA) permits."

The DACA program is an Obama Administration initiative awarding renewable two-year grants of legal status—  including Social Security numbers and work cards —  to illegals who say they arrived in the United States prior to their 16th birthday. The administration says it is using its "prosecutorial" discretion" over when to arrest and deport those illegally in the country. Critics counter that the implementation of DACA is a violation of the Constitution: President Obama could not persuade Congress to enact amnesty into law, so he usurped lawmakers’ powers and acted unilaterally. 

Thousands of family units that recently entered the United States illegally failed to appear before immigration judges between July 18 and October 7 of this year.

Documents from the Executive Office of Immigration Review provided to the House Judiciary Committee this week and exclusively obtained by Breitbart News offer a brief snapshot into the failure of certain undocumented immigrants who've been released into the United States to appear in immigration court. 

According to the EOIR documents, in that two-and-a-half month period from mid-July to early October, immigration judges across the country rendered 3,885 decisions on removal cases dealing with “aliens” in family units. Of those decisions, 94 percent (3,661) were made “in absentia,” or the alien’s failure to appear resulted in an order of removal. 

The document also showed that 9,874 cases were still pending over those months. 

Ex-Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano — who oversaw a sweeping directive that gave hundreds of thousands of young immigrants a reprieve from deportations — says she is backing President Barack Obama’s planned executive action on immigration.

“If Congress refuses to act and perform its duties, then I think it’s appropriate for the executive to step in and use his authorities based on law … to take action in the immigration arena,’’ Napolitano said in an interview with The Washington Post published Monday.

The comments came in advance of a speech that Napolitano will deliver later Monday at the University of Georgia School of Law. The speech, called “Anatomy of a Legal Decision,” dissected the internal debate over the federal 2012 directive, called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, that halted deportations of young undocumented immigrants and gave them work permits.

“It just seemed to me that we needed to do something for this group of young people,” Napolitano, now the president of the University of California system, told the paper. “They were brought here as kids, not of their own volition. They really are kind of the worst victims of the lack of immigration reform.”

Peter Kirsanow, as U.S. Civil Rights Commissioner, says in an Oct. 27 letter to Obama and the Congressional Black Caucus that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services' recently revealed preparations for a huge ID "surge" upped his alarm over what the president has planned. 

“Granting work authorization to millions of illegal immigrants will devastate the black community, which is already struggling in the wake of the recession that began in 2007 and the subsequent years of malaise,” he explained.

"Illegal immigration has a disparate impact on African-American men, because these men are disproportionately represented in the low-skilled labor force," Kirsanow added. 

Noting that he is writing as a single member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and not on behalf of the entire body, Kirsanow argued in a lengthy letter to Obama and Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-OH), the chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, that expected executive actions would have negative effects on low-skilled workers, particularly African Americans, and higher-skilled tech workers. 

“My concerns center around the effect such grant of legal status will have on two subsets of American workers: low-skilled workers, particularly low-skilled black workers, and high-skilled STEM workers.”

Kirsanow has raised concerns about the deleterious effects of amnesty – and increases in low-skilled immigration – on African Americans in the past, but he wrote that the recent revelation that the government is seeking supplies for up to 34 million green cards and work permits has “renewed” those concerns.

In his missive, the Civil Rights Commissioner recalled a briefing the Commission held in 2008, in which all the diverse range of witnesses noted that illegal immigration has had a negative impact on African American men, because they “are disproportionately represented in the low-skilled labor force,” in which illegal immigrants compete. He further noted that executive amnesty would also cause such harm. 

“The proposed executive order will also have a negative effect on young African-Americans at the outset of their working lives. Young, low-skilled workers are facing enormous difficulties in this economy,” Kirsanow wrote.

“Since 1986, we have seen that granting legal status to illegal immigrants, or even mere rumors that legal status will be granted, increases illegal immigration. Likewise, the evidence indicates that the flood of illegal immigrants across our southern border is mostly attributable to your directive granting temporary legal status to people allegedly brought to the United States as children. This is unsurprising. When you incentivize bad behavior, you get more of it,” he wrote. 

Kirsanow further questioned the need for more STEM workers, given that wages for such workers have not increased in the face of an apparent shortage. He argues that American STEM students are as capable as foreign students.

“Finally, I would like to say a few words about the supposed need for an increased number of high-tech visas. There is little evidence, other than the protestations of tech titans and politicians, that there is a shortage of STEM workers in the United States. Statistics suggest otherwise,” he wrote.

In a message to the American people, the president of the union representing 12,000 United States Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) adjudicators and personnel is warning about President Obama’s plans for executive amnesty.

The statement, obtained in advance by Breitbart News, finds National Citizenship and Immigration Services Council president Kenneth Palinkas highlighting the recent USCIS draft solicitation for materials for up to 34 million green cards and work authorizations.

According to Palinkas, the solicitation “predicts the Administration’s promised executive amnesty,” which he said the American people should reject.

“This massive unilateral amnesty is slated to be issued after the November 2014 elections. Efforts by members of the Senate to block this action were stopped in their tracks by 52 Senators who, on July 31st, defeated a legislative maneuver to prohibit the President’s actions,” Palinkas said in the statement. 

“That is why this statement is intended for the public: if you care about your immigration security and your neighborhood security, you must act now to ensure that Congress stops this unilateral amnesty,” he continued. “Let your voice be heard and spread the word to your neighbors. We who serve in our nation’s immigration agencies are pleading for your help – don’t let this happen. Express your concern to your Senators and Congressmen before it is too late.”

Palinkas, a vocal opponent of amnesty and the Senate-immigration bill, highlighted the government policies that have served to make adjudication officers’ jobs more difficult and Americans less safe. He further revealed plans to waive certain applicant interviews.

“There are plans to waive interviews of applicants who seek adjustment of their status in the U.S. to ready our workforce for the coming onslaught of applications unforeseen in previous administrations,” he said, going on to add that the officers’ roies as “the world’s rubber-stamp for entry into the United States” is putting the American people at risk. 

“Whether it’s the failure to uphold the public charge laws, the abuse of our asylum procedures, the admission of Islamist radicals, or visas for health risks, the taxpayers are being fleeced and public safety is being endangered on a daily basis,” he added.

The Obama administration will pay $9 million over the next two years to give taxpayer-funded attorneys to some of the illegal immigrant children who have surged across the U.S. border this year, the Health and Human Services Department said Tuesday.

About 2,600 immigrants will be able to be represented by lawyers thanks to the funds, which were awarded in two grants to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, according to a notice to be published in the Federal Register on Thursday.

Advocates cheered the decision, which they'd been demanding for months, saying it will not only help the children get a fair hearing on asylum claims, but it will also make the court proceedings go faster, which will end up saving the government money.

But administration critics in Congress said the move could violate federal law and will most likely prolong illegal immigrants' time in the U.S., encouraging more children to make the dangerous crossing.

"To end the surge at the border, the Obama administration should instead focus its efforts on deterring future border crossers and enforcing the laws against illegal entry into the United States," said House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, Virginia Republican. "Without such actions, the flood of people attempting to cross the border illegally will only continue."

The administration's move marks another effort to circumvent Congress.

WASHINGTON — Tens of thousands of young families caught crossing the border illegally earlier this year subsequently failed to meet with federal immigration agents, as they were instructed, the Homeland Security Department has acknowledged privately.

An official with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement revealed that about 70 percent of immigrant families the Obama administration had released into the U.S. never showed up weeks later for follow up appointments.

The ICE official made the disclosure in a confidential meeting at its Washington headquarters with immigration advocates participating in a federal working group on detention and enforcement policies. The Associated Press obtained an audio recording of Wednesday's meeting and separately interviewed participants.

On the recording obtained by the AP, the government did not specify the total number of families released into the U.S. since October. Since only a few hundred families have already been returned to their home countries and limited U.S. detention facilities can house only about 1,200 family members, the 70 percent figure suggests the government released roughly 41,000 members of immigrant families who subsequently failed to appear at federal immigration offices.

The official, who was not identified by name on the recording obtained by the AP, also said final deportation had been ordered for at least 860 people traveling in families caught at the border since May but only 14 people had reported as ordered.

The Homeland Security Department did not dispute the authenticity of the recording.

The U.S. government may have to pay big bucks to settle an unbelievable case involving an anchor baby—traveling from Guatemala with her illegal immigrant grandfather—who wasn’t allowed into the country to be reunited with her illegal alien parents.

It sounds like a bad joke, but it’s a real-life case pending in federal court and a George W. Bush-appointed judge appears to sympathize with the illegal immigrants. In a ruling issued this month, Judge Kiyo Matsumoto in the Eastern District of New York refused to dismiss the case against the government and accused U.S. Homeland Security agents of “negligence and laziness” for essentially doing their job.

Here’s the incredible story; a Guatemalan couple living illegally in Long Island New York sent their 4-year-old, U.S.-born daughter to spend winter with her extended family in Guatemala. The maternal grandfather, a Guatemalan who had previously violated U.S. immigration laws, traveled with the girl since her parents’ illegal status would prevent them from reentering the U.S. if they left. But when the girl, Emily, and her grandpa, Luis Dubon, returned from their Central American adventure, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) found the grandfather did not have proper documentation to enter the United States.