Tag: DHS

Obama to Defy Judge and Grant Amnesty By Executive Order

On By kingsjesterIn Politics1 Comment

th (8)It appears that Obama is about to create some new Democrat Voters.

Thehill.com reports that

A newly leaked internal DHS memorandum produced for an off-the-record agency conclave reveals that the Obama administration is actively planning to circumvent a federal court injunction that suspended part of last November’s deferral-based amnesty initiative. The document, apparently prepared as follow-up from a DHS “Regulations Retreat” last summer, appears sure to re-ignite concerns in Congress as well as federal judges in the Fifth Circuit. The Administration has already been criticized from the bench for handing out work permits to hundreds of thousands of deferred action beneficiaries, in direct violation of a district court’s order. With the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals deciding any day now whether to deny the Administration’s request to reverse that injunction, this public leak has come at a critical juncture for U.S. enforcement policy. 

Last June, four months after Texas federal judge Andrew Hanen’s order to freeze President’s DAPA and Expanded DACA programs—disclosure: the Immigration Reform Law Institute has filed briefs in these cases—DHS’s immigration policy makers apparently held a “Regulations Retreat” to discuss “different options” for “open market Employment Authorization Document (EAD) regulatory changes.” EAD is the statutory term for work permits. From a memo recording these discussions, we now know that the Obama DHS has, rather than pausing to allow the courts to assess the constitutionality of its enforcement nullification initiatives, been gearing up to roll out one or more of four plans drawn up at the meeting, each one designed to provide EADs to millions of nonimmigrants, including those lawfully present and visa overstayers, crippling the actual employment-based visa system on the federal statute-book.

The internal memo reveals four options of varying expansiveness, with option 1 providing EADs to “all individuals living in the United States”, including illegal aliens, visa-overstayers, and H-1B guest-workers, while option 4 provides EADs only to those on certain unexpired non-immigrant visas. Giving EADs to any of the covered individuals, however, is in direct violation of Congress’s Immigration & Nationality Act and works to dramatically subvert our carefully wrought visa system. 

As mentioned, the first plan the memo discusses basically entails giving EADs to anyone physically present in the country who until now has been prohibited from getting one. A major positive to this option, the memo reads, is that it would “address the needs of some of the intended deferred action population.” Although DHS doesn’t say it expressly, included here would be those 4.3 million people covered by the president’s DAPA and Expanded DACA programs whose benefits were supposed to have been halted in the Hanen decision. On top of working around the Hanen injunction, this DHS plan would also dole out unrestricted EADs to those on temporary non-immigrant visas, such as H-1B-holders (their work authorizations being tied to their employers) and another 5 to 6 million illegal aliens thus far not covered by any of the President’s deferred action amnesty programs. By claiming absolute authority to grant work authorization to any alien, regardless of status, DHS is in effect claiming it can unilaterally de-couple the 1986 IRCA work authorization statutes from the main body of U.S. visa law. While DHS must still observe the statutory requirements for issuing visas, the emerging doctrine concedes, the administration now claims unprecedented discretionary power to permit anyone inside our borders to work. 

The anonymous DHS policymakers state that a positive for this option is that it “could cover a greater number of individuals.” In a strikingly conclusory bit of bureaucratese, they state that because illegal aliens working in the country “have already had the US labor market tested” it has been “demonstrat[ed] that their future employment won’t adversely affect US workers.” The labor market, in other words, has already been stress-tested through decades of foreign-labor dumping and the American working-class, which disproportionately includes minorities, working mothers, the elderly, and students, is doing just fine. Apparently, the fact that 66 million Americans and legal aliens are currently unemployed or out of the job-market was not a discussion point at the DHS “Retreat.” 

Bottom line: The memo foreshadows more tactical offensives in a giant administrative amnesty for all 12 million illegal aliens who’ve broken our immigration laws (and many other laws) that will emerge before the next inaugural in January 2016. According to the authors, one negative factor for granting EADs to illegal aliens, visa-overstayers, etc., is that they’ll still “face difficulties in pursuing permanent residence due to ineligibility or being subject to unlawful presence inadmissibility for which a waiver is required.” This is in reference to the reality that an EAD isn’t a green card and that eventually the EAD-beneficiaries are supposed to apply to ‘adjust their status,’ which cannot be done without showing evidence of lawful status. But this might change, they write. The DHS “macro-level policy goal”, we’re told, is to assist individuals to stay “until they are ready and able to become immigrants.” This would seem to say that DHS, the largest federal law enforcement agency in the nation, is banking on awarding those who’ve broken our laws and violated our national sovereignty.

Will the 26 plaintiff states that have challenged the President’s DAPA program bring this memo to the Fifth Circuit’s attention, before they issue their closely-awaited decision?  If this document is indeed the cutting edge of Obama’s strategy for DHS to circumvent Judge Hanen’s injunction order, it would confirm the Administration’s bad faith and contempt both for the court and the law.

So, with 40% of America’s Workforce giving up on the American Dream and dropping out of our workforce, King Barack the First has once again decided that he will increase the competition for America’s jobs, by issuing a Royal Decree (Executive Order) granting amnesty to those who have illegally entered our Sovereign Nation, to the detriment of legal American citizens.

In 2013, brilliant American Economist and Political Pundit, Dr. Thomas Sowell, was interviewed by Laura Ingraham, on her syndicated radio program. Here is what he had to say about Amnesty and the Economy:

That’s incredible. I mean —first of all to an economist, it is incredible to speak about shortages without talking about prices, in this case wages…You know there, there have been so many predictions of shortages of so many occupations and the shortages don’t materialize. And why not? Because if there is a shortage, the wage rate goes up. That attracts in more people and lo and behold, the jobs are filled.

In agriculture, the farmers would obviously prefer to get workers who get low pay rather than workers they have to pay a higher wage. And as long as there are an unlimited supply of farm workers coming in from Mexico, they will never have to raise the wages very much. They say Americans won’t do these jobs. These are jobs Americans have done for generations, if not centuries. And it’s a time when millions of Americans are out of work, and are looking for any kind of work. And so this is utter nonsense.

…They constantly talk about immigrants in the abstract. You know, there are no such thing as abstract immigrants. There are immigrants from country a, b, c, d. They are radically different. People coming in from some countries almost never go on welfare. Immigrants coming in from other countries go on welfare to a great extent. If we’re going to have a rational immigration policy, then we have to be able to decide what people, what countries, what occupations — things like that, instead of rushing everything through.

The other main thing though is that if we don’t control the borders, we don’t have an immigration policy because regardless of what policy you put on paper, if people can just walk across the border when they darn well please, then your policy means nothing. The other thing that bothers me is the Republicans seem to think we will give — illegal immigrants citizenship if they do a, b or c. Democrats say x, y and z. I don’t know why we need promise anybody citizenship before we get control of the borders and have time to sit down and think and look at the facts, and then try to draw up some rational policy.

What makes the current influx of illegal immigrants exempt from the rules and regulations that every other generation of immigrants to this country had to abide by in order to become legal citizens of the greatest nation in the world? By being here illegally, they are not entitled to the same rights as natural-born or naturalized American citizens.

And, yet, even as I write this, they are in our hospitals, taking advantage of our charity and the finest health care system in the world, and driving our streets, with either forged drivers licenses or those obtained from states who have acquiesced and given them to these “undocumented workers”.

This is in no way a human rights issue. Freedom is God-given, and with freedom comes responsibility. With citizenship comes responsibility, like paying taxes and making your own way.

My concerns about this whole “Path to Citizenship” business, can be divided into three bullet points. (Hey, I used to be a VP of Marketing. What do you expect?)

1. Patriotism – Will these new “citizens” be willing to fly our flag above theirs? Will they be willing, if called upon, to serve in our Armed Forces, at home or abroad? Will they love this country, more than the one they left?

2. Loyalty – When these “new Americans” achieve the right to vote, are they all going to vote Democrat, so that they can receive more FREE STUFF? Is the Republican Party shooting themselves in both feet by pushing an outcome which will simply add new Democratic Voters? As I asked in the first point, will they honestly embrace our sovereign nation as their new home? Or, will they remain loyal to Mexico?

3.  Immigration – Are we rewarding illegal behavior, while at the same time, insulting all of the brave souls who have come here legally, seeking a better life for themselves and their families?

I understand that people want a better life for themselves and their children.  We are all immigrants in this land, except for American Indians, and they got here by crossing the Bering Straight.  But there is a huge difference between immigrating here legally and sneaking in illegally, between assimilating into an existing culture, and insisting on replacing a country’s existing culture with that of the country you left.

I’m all for assisting anyone in becoming a legal citizen of the United States, if that is their wish.  But, it must be done the right way, and they must accept responsibility for their illegal entry, show a willingness to learn our language, and embrace our American way of life, including respecting the American Flag.

So, let’s take this one step at a time.  As Dr. Sowell said: Secure our borders.  Enforce the anti-illegal immigration laws.  And if the Federal Government won’t, the states, like Arizona, will have to pass their own laws.  America became a great nation because it is a melting pot of American-born and legally-immigrated citizens with a shared allegiance, not a multi-cultural United Nations with everyone loyal to their home country.

As the diseases which the Mexican Munchkin Migration brought in with them have warned us, a wide-open Southern Border is as big a threat to the sovereignty of the United States as anything that our enemies can throw at us right now.  All of OUR SERVANTS, up on Capitol HIll, need to quit playing political games.  The safety of America is at stake .  SECURE THE BORDER NOW.

Until He Comes,

KJ

Obama to Allow Illegals to Stay Here By Executive Order

On By kingsjesterIn Politics2 Comments

illegal immigration 7714While Republican Presidential Hopeful and Professional Firebrand, Donald J. Trump, heads toward America’s Southern Border, to talk with the American Citizens under siege down there, President Barack Hussein Obama is making plans to circumvent our System of Checks and Balances, in order to create new Democrat Voters.

The Washington Free Beacon reports that

The Obama administration is moving forward with plans to expand a waiver program that will allow additional illegal aliens to remain in the country rather than apply for legal status from abroad.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a proposed rule on Tuesday that would make changes to a waiver program created by President Barack Obama’s executive action on immigration in 2013. The action created a waiver that primarily allowed illegal immigrants with a U.S. citizen spouse or parent to stay in the country instead of having to leave the United States and be barred from returning for three or 10 years, if they proved their absence would create an “extreme hardship” for their spouse.

The new rule expands eligibility to a host of other categories of illegal immigrants beyond those with citizen spouses and parents.

“DHS proposes to expand the class of aliens who may be eligible for a provisional waiver beyond immediate relatives of U.S. citizens to aliens in all statutorily eligible immigrant visa categories,” the proposed rule stated. “Such aliens include family-sponsored immigrants, employment-based immigrants, certain special immigrants, and Diversity Visa program selectees, together with their derivative spouses and children.”

The waivers allow illegal immigrants to stay in the country while they await visas, and avoid a penalty under U.S. law that bars persons who entered the country illegally from returning for at least three years.

An illegal immigrant who lives in the country for less than a year and then leaves is barred from reentering the United States for three years. Any time spent illegally in the United States over one year results in the illegal immigrant being inadmissible for 10 years. The waiver program allowed individuals to remain in the country and avoid these penalties.

“It’s a very bad policy,” said Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies. “It makes it possible for illegal aliens to avoid the consequences established by Congress to deter people from settling here illegally and then laundering their status by adjusting to a green card.”

Vaughan, who has been following the issue for over two years, said the changes to the waiver program would increase fraud.

“It is a slap in the face to the many legal immigrants who abide by the law, follow the process, and wait their turn,” she said. “In addition, it will increase the likelihood of fraud in the marriage categories, which produce tens of thousands of new green cards each year.”

“Green cards are the golden ticket. Once you get a green cards you get welfare, you get tax credits, you get entitlements,” said a GOP Senate aide. “The U.S. hands out one million green cards every year, and these documents are bankrupting the country.”

DHS said it is proposing the rule based on its “broad authority” under the Homeland Security Act of 2002.

The rule would also broaden the category of those whom an illegal alien can claim their absence from the United States would create an “extreme hardship.” Previously, the waiver only could be given if the illegal immigrant has a spouse or parent who is an American citizen.

“DHS also proposes to expand who may be considered a qualifying relative for purposes of the extreme hardship determination to include [legal permanent resident] LPR spouses and parents,” the proposed rule said.

The agency said the rule is intended to “prioritize the family reunification of immediate relatives of U.S. citizens over other categories of aliens.”

“The president should not be issuing executive actions that serve only to expedite the legalization process for those who have ignored our laws,” said Vaughan. “This legalization gimmick is undermining the integrity of our legal immigration system, and Congress should take steps to block it.”

The public will have 60 days to comment on the proposal.

So, with 40% of America’s Workforce giving up on the American Dream and dropping out of our workforce, King Barack the First has once again decided that he will increase the competition for America’s jobs, by issuing a Royal Decree (Executive Order) granting amnesty to those who have illegally entered our Sovereign Nation, to the detriment of legal American citizens.

In 2013, brilliant American Economist and Political Pundit, Dr. Thomas Sowell, was interviewed by Laura Ingraham, on her syndicated radio program. Here is what he had to say about Amnesty and the Economy:

That’s incredible. I mean —first of all to an economist, it is incredible to speak about shortages without talking about prices, in this case wages…You know there, there have been so many predictions of shortages of so many occupations and the shortages don’t materialize. And why not? Because if there is a shortage, the wage rate goes up. That attracts in more people and lo and behold, the jobs are filled.

In agriculture, the farmers would obviously prefer to get workers who get low pay rather than workers they have to pay a higher wage. And as long as there are an unlimited supply of farm workers coming in from Mexico, they will never have to raise the wages very much. They say Americans won’t do these jobs. These are jobs Americans have done for generations, if not centuries. And it’s a time when millions of Americans are out of work, and are looking for any kind of work. And so this is utter nonsense.

…They constantly talk about immigrants in the abstract. You know, there are no such thing as abstract immigrants. There are immigrants from country a, b, c, d. They are radically different. People coming in from some countries almost never go on welfare. Immigrants coming in from other countries go on welfare to a great extent. If we’re going to have a rational immigration policy, then we have to be able to decide what people, what countries, what occupations — things like that, instead of rushing everything through.

The other main thing though is that if we don’t control the borders, we don’t have an immigration policy because regardless of what policy you put on paper, if people can just walk across the border when they darn well please, then your policy means nothing. The other thing that bothers me is the Republicans seem to think we will give — illegal immigrants citizenship if they do a, b or c. Democrats say x, y and z. I don’t know why we need promise anybody citizenship before we get control of the borders and have time to sit down and think and look at the facts, and then try to draw up some rational policy.

In 1903,  Jacob A. Riis,  a reporter who was born in Denmark in 1849 and immigrated to America at the age of 21, wrote the following about the immigrants who landed at Ellis Island,

The railroad ferries come and take their daily host straight from Ellis Island to the train, ticketed now with the name of the route that is to deliver them at their new homes, West and East. And the Battery boat comes every hour for its share. Then the many-hued procession-the women are hooded, one and all, in their gayety shawls for the entry-is led down on a long pathway divided in the middle by a wire screen, form behind which come shrieks of recognition from fathers, brothers, uncles, and aunts that are gathered there in the holiday togs of Mulberry or Division Street. The contrast is sharp-an artist would say all in favor of the newcomers. But they would be the last to agree with him. In another week the rainbow colors will have been laid aside, and the landscape will be poorer for it. On the boat they meet their friends, and the long journey is over, the new life begun.Those who have no friends run the gauntlet of the boarding-house runners, and take their chances with the new freedom, unless the missionary or “the society” of their people holds out a helping hand. For at the barge-office gate Uncle Sam lets go. Through it they must walk alone.

I know that you have heard America referred to as a Melting Pot.

That phrase was actually made popular in the 1908 play, “The Melting Pot,” a stage play by Israel Zangwill that encouraged assimilation into our nation’s culture by the immigrants of the time.

Zangwill was the London-born son of Russian Jewish immigrants. His play made its debut in Washington in 1908 and played in New York for four months the next year. The main character is David Quixano, a Jewish immigrant, orphaned by a pogram, which is a massacre of Jews. Quizano lives with his uncle on Staten Island and becomes smitten with the daughter of a Russian nobleman.

In the end, the good guy(David) gets the girl, which inspires him to shout from the rooftop of a Lower East Side settlement house that “America is God’s crucible” and to proclaim: “What is the glory of Rome and Jerusalem where all nations and races come to worship and look back, compared with the glory of America, where all races and nations come to labor and look forward!”

What Petulant President Pantywaist and his sycophantic Liberal supporters in Washington, the Main Stream Media, and elsewhere fail to realize, is that you can’t buy loyalty to a nation. 

The British found that out with their hired German Mercenaries, the Hessians, during the Revolutionary War.

In their self-absorbed Political Greed, America’s professional politicians are setting the stage for the possible fall of our nation.

Legal Immigrants earned their citizenship. They showed that they were willing to become a part of the Great American Melting Pot (from the Schoolhouse Rock video of the same name).

Illegal Immigrants do not respect the laws of our land, to begin with. Why would that change, if they were given the rights of citizenship?

And, what about the 40% of America’s Workforce, who have dropped out due to frustration, depression, and aggravation?

How about taking care of those whom you are supposed to be serving, first, Mr. President?

Until He Comes,

KJ

Leadership Vacuum At The Department of Homeland Security

On By kingsjesterIn PoliticsLeave a comment

HomelandSecurity9212014The Office of Homeland Security was formed in the aftermath of the worst Terrorist Attack ever committed on American Soil, in the days following September 11, 2001.  President George W. Bush picked Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge (1945-) as the first Office of Homeland Security Advisor.

The office became a department on November 25, 2002, as President Bush signed into law the Homeland Security Act, which created the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and mde Ridge a cabinet-level administrator.

The DHS pledged to carry out new initiatives to, the extent possible, protect the nation from further attacks.

In creating Homeland Security, Congress lumped together 22 previously unconnected federal agencies under a new Cabinet secretary. 108 congressional committees and subcommittees oversee the department’s operations.

In an Organization so huge, as you can imagine, some “little things” may “slip through the cracks” from time to time.

Some “BIG THINGS”, too.

Back on September 8th, Reuters.com reported that

The Department of Homeland Security failed to assess the supplies it needed to deal with a potential pandemic and now has expired stockpiles including medications, 200,000 respirators and 4,184 bottles of hand sanitizers, an inspector general report showed.

The department bought 16 million surgical masks and 350,000 white coverall suits without establishing the need for them, according to its inspector general’s report, which included photographs of stacks of unopened boxes piled high in a storeroom.

Eighty-one percent of DHS’ supply of 296,000 doses of antiviral medication, called medical countermeasures, will expire next year, according to the report completed in late August and released on Monday.
 
DHS also did not keep track of its supplies or where they were kept.

“As a result, the department has no assurance it has sufficient personal protective equipment and antiviral medical countermeasures for a pandemic response,” it concluded.

The report comes as the United States prepares to help African countries devastated by the rapid spread of the Ebola virus and work to keep it from spreading to its shores.

The inspector general said DHS spent $47 million Congress appropriated in 2006 for a potential pandemic on the preparedness equipment, medication, research and exercises.

The Transportation Security Administration’s stock of pandemic preparedness equipment includes 200,000 respirators that are past the five-year manufacturer’s guaranteed usability, the report said.

The inspector general said 84 percent of the department’s 4,982 bottles of hand sanitizers were expired, some by up to four years.

The inspector general made 11 recommendations.

“While DHS concurs with the OIG’s recommendations, we had already previously identified many of the issues prior to the review, and have taken comprehensive actions to address them,” including finalizing the recall of the expired medicines, DHS spokesman S.Y. Lee said in a statement.

So, with a virus attacking young asthmatic Americans from coast to coast, and with Obama sending 3,000 of our Brightest and Best into the heart of Africa’s Ebola Outbreak, it has been shown that DHS is not prepared to handle the possibility of a pandemic in our country.

Unfortunately, that “little problem” appears to be just the tip of the iceberg.

According to The Washington Post,

An exodus of top-level officials from the Department of Homeland Security is undercutting the agency’s ability to stay ahead of a range of emerging threats, including potential terrorist strikes and cyberattacks, according to interviews with current and former officials.

Over the past four years, employees have left DHS at a rate nearly twice as fast as in the federal government overall, and the trend is accelerating, according to a review of a federal database.

The departures are a result of what employees widely describe as a dysfunctional work environment, abysmal morale, and the lure of private security companies paying top dollar that have proliferated in Washington since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The department’s terrorism intelligence arm, for example, has cycled through six directors during the Obama administration, decimating morale and contributing to months-long delays in releasing intelligence reports, according to interviews and government reports.

A parade of high-level departures, on top of other factors, has meanwhile helped slow the rollout of key cybersecurity initiatives, including a program aimed at blocking malicious software before it can infiltrate civilian government computers, former officials say.

With the country facing a crisis of unaccompanied minors crossing the southwest border in recent months, the pair of DHS agencies responsible for tackling this problem have been hindered by turnover of top officials. U.S. Customs and Border Protection, for instance, has had six commissioners under President Obama, four of them in a caretaker role because they were not confirmed by the Senate.

And at the Transportation Security Administration, a DHS agency created after 9/11 to enhance airport security, the hemorrhaging of both senior and junior personnel has “had a tremendous effect,’’ said Kenneth Kasprisin, a former acting TSA head who left the agency in May.

“You cannot sustain a high level of security operations when you have that kind of turnover,’’ he said, attributing the defections to “a toxic culture” and “terrible” morale.

Seriously, would you want to work in the Obama Administration?

As I wrote the other day, their planning for the prosecution of the war-which-is-not-a-war against ISIS/ISIL, alone, is reminiscent of a Benny Hill Show-Ending Chase Scene.

How can there be any sort of consistent leadership in such a huge organization experiencing a “revolving door”, spinning at the speed of the turnstile at Disney World or, Madonna’s Bedroom Door back in the 1980s, take your pick.

Why is this department experiencing all this turnover in personnel?

Well, the fact of the matter is that DHS is mirroring the instability and misplaced priorities of the entire Obama White House.

In order to do a good job at any position, much less a Government Job, you have to be a dedicated employee, or, in the case of DHS, a dedicated public servant.

If those above you, from the President on down, are not dedicated public servants, then why should you be?

Let’s face it:  The President went golfing, immediately after announcing that an American Journalist had been beheaded by the Muslim Barbarians known as ISIS/ISIL.

If the Leader of the Free World doesn’t give a hoot ‘n holler about performing his job duties to the best of his ability, why should his employees at DHS?

And, with jobs available for them in the private sector, it is very easy for them to “Take the Money and Run” (hoo hoo hoo).

Unfortunately, as I alluded to earlier, without consistent leadership, to keep employees motivated and “on mission”, any organization will begin to swirl down the ol’ porcelain receptacle very quickly, resulting in the “toxic culture” and “terrible morale” mentioned in the article.

Because, just as they say in the Military and the Business World,

**it rolls downhill.

And, any organization is on;y as strong as its leadership.

However, when it is an organization that has the powers and responsibilities of the Department of Homeland Security, this vacuum of leadership becomes a volatile and dangerous situation, which affects the safety of our entire nation.

So, until January of 2017, DHS is screwed.

And, so are we.

Until He Comes,

KJ