U.S. relaxes deportation rules for young people

[American Patriot]

U.S. relaxes deportation rules for young people






WASHINGTON | Fri Jun 15, 2012 10:42am EDT



(Reuters) - The Obama administration announced on Friday it would relax enforcement of deportation rules for young people brought to the United States without legal status, a shift in immigration policy that could be designed to appeal to Hispanics in an election year.


U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said in a statement that people up to 30 years old who came to the United States as children and do not pose a risk to national security would be eligible to stay in the country and allowed to apply for work permits.


"Our nation's immigration laws must be enforced in a firm and sensible manner," Napolitano said in a statement. "But they are not designed to be blindly enforced without consideration given to the individual circumstances of each case."


(Reporting By Jeff Mason; Editing by Doina Chiacu)

[Ryan Ruck]

Amazing how they believe they can make laws up at their own whim...

U.S. To Stop Deporting Young Illegal Immigrants

June 15, 2012

Effective immediately, the Obama administration will stop deporting and begin granting work permits to younger illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as children and have since led law-abiding lives. The election-year initiative addresses a top priority of an influential Latino electorate that has been vocal in its opposition to administration deportation policies.

The policy change will affect as many as 800,000 (illegal) immigrants (I'm sure we can at least double or triple those numbers) who have lived in fear of deportation. It also bypasses Congress and partially achieves the goals of the so-called DREAM Act, a long-sought but never enacted plan to establish a path toward citizenship for young people who came to the United States illegally but who have attended college or served in the military.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced the new policy Friday, one week before President Obama plans to address the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials' annual conference in Orlando, Fla. Republican presidential challenger Mitt Romney is scheduled to speak to the group on Thursday.

"Our nation's immigration laws must be enforced in a firm and sensible manner," Napolitano said in a statement. "But they are not designed to be blindly enforced without consideration given to the individual circumstances of each case. Nor are they designed to remove productive young people to countries where they may not have lived or even speak the language. Discretion, which is used in so many other areas, is especially justified here."

Mr. Obama planned to discuss the new policy Friday afternoon from the White House Rose Garden.

Under the administration plan, illegal immigrants will be immune from deportation if they were brought to the United States before they turned 16 and are younger than 30, have been in the country for at least five continuous years, have no criminal history, graduated from a U.S. high school or earned a GED, or served in the military. They also can apply for a work permit that will be good for two years with no limits on how many times it can be renewed.

The policy will not lead toward citizenship (not like they really give a damn about that since they seem to be doing fine without it) but will remove the threat of deportation and grant the ability to work legally, leaving eligible immigrants able to remain in the United States for extended periods. It tracks closely to a proposal offered by Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida as an alternative to the DREAM Act.

"Many of these young people have already contributed to our country in significant ways," Napolitano wrote in a memorandum describing the administration's action. "Prosecutorial discretion, which is used in so many other areas, is especially justified here."

The extraordinary move comes in an election year in which the Hispanic vote could be critical in swing states like Colorado, Nevada and Florida. While Mr. Obama enjoys support from a majority of Hispanic voters, Latino enthusiasm for the president has been tempered by the slow economic recovery, his inability to win congressional support for a broad overhaul of immigration laws and by his administration's aggressive deportation policy. Activists opposing his deportation policies last week mounted a hunger strike at an Obama campaign office in Denver, and other protests were planned for this weekend.

The change is likely to cause an outcry from congressional Republicans, who are sure to perceive Mr. Obama's actions as an end run around them. Republicans already have complained that previous administration uses of prosecutorial discretion in deportations amount to back-door amnesty. Romney and many Republican lawmakers want tighter border security measures before considering changes in immigration law. Romney opposes offering legal status to illegal immigrants who attend college but has said he would do so for those who serve in the armed forces.

An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll last month found Mr. Obama leading Romney among Hispanic voters 61 percent to 27 percent. But his administration's deportation policies have come under fire, and Latino leaders have raised the subject in private meetings with the president. In 2011, Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported a record 396,906 people and is expected to deport about 400,000 this year.

A December poll by the Pew Hispanic Center showed that 59 percent of Latinos disapproved of the president's handling of deportations.

The changes come a year after the administration announced plans to focus on deporting serious criminals, immigrants who pose threats to public safety and national security, and serious immigration law violators.

A senior administration official said the latest policy change is just another step in the administration's evolving approach to immigration.

Under the plan, immigrants whose deportation cases are pending in immigration court will have to prove their eligibility for a reprieve to ICE, which will begin dealing with such cases in 60 days. Any immigrant who already has a deportation order and those who never have been encountered by immigration authorities will deal with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

The exact details of how the program will work, including how much immigrants will have to pay to apply and what proof they will need, still are being worked out.

In making it harder to deport, the Obama administration is in essence employing the same eligibility requirements spelled out in the proposed DREAM Act.

Two senior administration officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, stopped short of calling the change an administrative DREAM Act — the name is an acronym for Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors — but the qualifications meet those laid out in a 2010 version that failed in the Senate after passing in the House. They said the DREAM Act, in some form, and comprehensive overhaul of the immigration system remained an administration priority.

Illegal immigrant children won't be eligible to apply for the deportation waiver until they turn 16, but the officials said younger children won't be deported either.

Last year, Napolitano announced plans to review about 300,000 pending deportation cases and indefinitely suspend those that didn't meet department priorities. So far, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has reviewed more than 232,000 cases and decided to stop working on about 20,000. About 4,000 of those 20,000 have opted to keep fighting in court to stay in the United States legally. For the people who opted to close their cases, work permits are not guaranteed.

[Ryan Ruck]

Dang, beaten by 3 minutes... I'll merge my thread into this one.

[American Patriot]

Obama to order immunity for young illegal immigrants

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Jorge Arroyo, 19, tearfully greets his mother at a migrant shelter in Nogales, Mexico. She came to take him back home to live in Mexico City. The teenager said he was deported after a dozen years as an illegal immigrant. (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times / November 1, 2011)

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By Christi Parsons and Kathleen Hennessey June 15, 2012, 7:21 a.m.

President Obama has ordered his administration to stop deporting young immigrants who came to the U.S. as young children and who do not pose a security threat, senior administration officials said this morning.

Effective immediately, young immigrants who arrived before they turned 16 will be allowed to apply for work permits as long as they have no criminal history and meet a series of other criteria, officials said.

The change comes at crucial moment in a presidential campaign that will turn in part on who wins over Latino voters.

Republican leaders, including GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, have argued for greater efforts to identify and deport anyone living in the U.S. illegally -- including those who have lived and worked here for years, not just those found guilty of committing crimes.

Since securing his party’s nomination, some within the GOP have urged Romney to take a softer approach. But he has not yet taken a stance on more lenient proposals aimed at accommodating concerns of young people.
Obama has called for a broad overhaul of immigration policy and embraces the concept of Dream Act legislation, which would create a legal way for immigrants who arrived in the U.S. as children to stay in the country.

The change the administration is announcing today would allow illegal immigrants under the age of 30 to stay and work in the country if they don't pose a national security or public safety risk.

Disqualified from application would be immigrants convicted of crimes, violent criminals, felons and repeat offenders of immigration law.

Those who show that they meet the criteria will be eligible to apply for deferred action on deportation for a period of two years. That status will be renewable, one official said.

They will also be able to apply for authorization to work.

Under the new rules, eligible individuals would have to meet a series of requirements in order to apply. They must have come to the U.S. before they turned 16 and must have resided in the U.S. continuously for at least five years.

They must be present in the U.S. right now, and be enrolled in school, hold a high school diploma or GED or serve in the U.S. military. Veterans who have been honorably discharged would also be eligible.

They cannot be convicted of a felony offense, a significant misdemeanor offense or more than one misdemeanor, or for some other reason pose a security or safety threat.

Obama plans to discuss the announcement in the Rose Garden later today.

[MinutemanCO]

Now, why is this okay?

[American Patriot]

You know the sad part about this...

It isn't that they are just going to let all the young folks stay... (through no fault of their own, which honestly I kind of agree with... I'll explain that later) .... but at some point in the future, all of these folks will have "self-identified" (now the explanation, I know one person who was brought here due to extenuating circumstances, mother is apparently committed in Mexico, father is long gone, probably dead and she lives with relatives who are citizens... anyway...back to the story)... those who are now "self-identified" will eventually be deported by another administration once they change the "law" back on a "whim".

[American Patriot]

It's NOT ok.

I don't agree with this.

I don't agree with "amnesty" in general, only on an individual basis because anyone who is a criminal who is here should go back. People brought here as children who have lived here all their lives shouldn't be forced to go back to a country they don't know as home though (in my opinion).


But, the FIRST thing that ought to have been done was to CLOSE THE DAMNED BORDERS!

Then sort it out.

One person at a time.

Damn these idiots

[MinutemanCO]

We are imploding from the inside. A country's death of a thousand cuts.

[catfish]

At least the economy still sucks ass so we may not see a flood of illegals because of this.

Rick also makes an excellent point, these people may eventually be deported when a new administration decides to change this policy. These are human beings, sometimes treated almost like slaves, being used as political pawns in the vain hope of getting votes. I do not fault them for wanting to come here, I fault a government on almost every level down to cities that refuses to deal with a serious national and local problem called illegal immigration. Any time a leader has the balls to actually do something, they are attacked from all sides, including from the ones we expect to protect us.

[vector7]

bump

[Ryan Ruck]

In First Year of New Program, Deportation Is Deferred for 400,000 Young Immigrants

August 15, 2013

About 400,000 "Dreamers" have been allowed to stay in the United States in the year since the Obama administration began accepting applications for young illegal immigrants to defer deportation proceedings and receive work permits, according to data compiled by the Brookings Institution and released on the anniversary of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

The numbers show that out of more than a half-million applicants for deferred action, more than three-quarters were accepted and just 1 percent denied. The applications were concentrated in states that already have large immigrant communities, such as California, Texas, New York, Illinois, and Florida. On the East Coast, the applications were from a more diverse set of countries while in the West, Midwest, and South the vast majority of applicants were from Mexico.



"DACA has been an incredible success for our country," said Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chairman Ruben Hinojosa, D-Texas. "To date we have given 400,000 young immigrants the ability to continue to contribute to this country, the only country that most of these outstanding individuals have ever known."

The fate of these younger immigrants brought to the country illegally as children—the so-called Dreamers—is less precarious than many of the other 11 million people living in the U.S. without papers. Lawmakers have been quicker to agree that the Dreamers deserve special treatment, including an expedited path to citizenship.

Hinojosa and other supporters of immigration reform point to the DACA program, which began a year ago Thursday, as a sign of progress; some see it as an indication of what President Obama will do for other undocumented immigrants if Congress does not act.

"The overwhelming success of this program also gives me optimism that we can move beyond the political rhetoric on a broader immigration reform bill," Hinojosa said. "It is my great hope that when we return from recess, Congress can finally begin work on passing a broader immigration reform bill with an earned pathway to citizenship."

The Homeland Security Department has also pointed to their successful implementation of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program as evidence that it is structurally prepared to deal with a major immigration overhaul.

But at least one lawmaker who backs comprehensive immigration reform, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., has pointed to the administration's program as a reason the House needs to act to address the entirety of the immigration system. The Senate passed a comprehensive reform package in June.

"I believe that this president will be tempted, if nothing happens in Congress, to issue an executive order as he did for the Dream Act kids a year ago, where he basically legalizes 11 million people by the sign of a pen," Rubio said during an interview with radio station WFLA earlier this week.

Brookings supplemented monthly U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services data with a Freedom of Information Act request to DHS for more information about the size, demographics, geographic distribution, age, and year of arrival of applicants to the DACA program.

Based on estimates that 936,000 eligible immigrants were living in the U.S. when the program began, 59 percent have applied. The applicants come from 192 countries, although 96 percent are from the same 25 countries that have at least 1,000 applicants each. The vast majority of applicants, 75 percent, are from Mexico, with the next largest group, 4 percent, from El Salvador. At least 1 percent of applicants hailed from Honduras, Guatemala, South Korea, Peru, Brazil, Colombia, and Ecuador.

The study's authors say the trends among DACA applicants could preview the demographics of a large-scale legalization of undocumented immigrants. Experts speculated that aggressive coverage of the program by Spanish-language media could account for the high percentage of applicants from Spanish-speaking countries. By comparison, only 4 percent of applicants came from Asian countries, even though it is estimated that they represent 6 percent of eligible immigrants for the program.

Applicants for the program had to arrive in the U.S. before age 16 and reside here without legal status since June 15, 2007. The most frequent age of arrival was 8, though two-thirds came to the U.S. before they were 10 years old. There was a spike in immigration between 1998 and 2001, which represent the peak years of arrival for DACA applicants.

House members departed for the August recess with a handful of single-issue immigration bills and no timeline for when they might get a final vote. None of the existing bills addresses the vast majority of the population that came to the U.S. illegally as adults.

Yet another group of high-profile Republicans, including former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, came out Thursday in favor of a sequence of provisional legal status, legal permanent residency, and citizenship for immigrants.

Barbour and Rice, along with former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell and former U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros—both Democrats—were the cochairs of the Bipartisan Policy Center's Immigration Task Force, which issued recommendations for immigration reform Thursday.

"I believe if there is a rigorous path to citizenship that does have rigorous requirements, I'm comfortable with it," Barbour said on a conference call with reporters.

The BPC recommendations broadly track with the legislation approved by the Senate, although task force members say they hope their suggestions will improve the bill. In particular, they called for more precise metrics to measure border security.

"The current Senate bill provides additional border assets, such as more border personnel and technology. However, it does not provide outcome-based border-security metrics that are trustworthy and verifiable, such as measuring the net inflow of illegal migrants or the percentage of individuals who overstay their visas," the report said. "We believe the United States should establish a scientifically valid set of measures that are audited by an independent commission and published periodically for public scrutiny."

It's unclear whether the recommendations will have that much effect on lawmakers who are home hearing from their constituents—some of whom don't want to extend citizenship to immigrants here illegally. The task force plans to publicize its recommendations at events throughout the country as well as through op-eds in local newspapers. Members also will be taking the report to meetings on Capitol Hill.

The decision to release the recommendations during the August recess was not meant to pressure lawmakers, but rather to put out a straightforward plan that "gets a bird's eye view of the major pillars of a balanced reform," said former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, a member of the BPC task force. "Hopefully that will help [the American people] engage and talk to their representatives."

[vector7]

U.S. has lost track of tens of thousands of foreign students who came study to then took jobs



By Stephen Dinan
The Washington Times

Sunday, March 9, 2014

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• Audio Clip: 03-10-14 12a Stephen Dinan with Andy Parks

The federal government has lost track of tens of thousands of foreign students who came to the U.S. to study and then took jobs, often in violation of the terms of their visas, according to a new internal audit.



U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement doesn’t even consistently collect information or have the tools to monitor all of the foreign students who take part in the optional practical training (OPT) program, the Government Accountability Office said in a new report released late Friday.


“The problems with OPT are extensive and serious. The report not only calls into question the department’s oversight of the program, but also whether such lack of oversight is a serious national security risk,” Sen. Charles E. Grassley, the Iowa Republican who released the report, said in a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson.


Officials who run the Student and Exchange Visitor Program have deemed OPT to be a low-risk program, but the new findings suggest that may be wrong.


Immigration agents told investigators they view the program as a gateway to illegal immigration, since students who are approved are allowed to work not just during their time in school, but also for up to 29 months after they complete their studies.


The agents said that since those students no longer show up for class, both the government and schools have a tough time monitoring whether they are complying with the terms of their visas by working within their field and going home when their time is up.


Indeed, a high percentage of student records don’t even list an employer’s name.


Some concerns raised by investigators about the program were deemed too sensitive to release to the public, and they were redacted from the 46-page report.


Homeland Security officials agreed with the six recommendations investigators made, and said they’ve already taken some steps to find missing documents.


Officials also said they will finish a full risk analysis of schools that may pose a risk of problems by Sept. 30.


OPT was designed to allow foreign students to gain some work experience in their field of study while they are in the U.S. The program allows students to stay for a period of time even after they have completed their study — 14 months for most students, but up to 31 months for those in science, math and technology fields.


As of late last year, about 100,000 of the 1 million foreign students in the U.S. were approved to take part in OPT.


GAO investigators said they found thousands of students whose records show they stayed beyond the time limit.


Their report lists a number of pieces of information that federal authorities don’t accurately track for all students inthe program, including employers’ names; whether the job is actually related to their field of study; and job start date and duration.


“By collecting the appropriate information in SEVIS and monitoring such information for compliance, ICE may better position itself to determine whether foreign students approved for OPT are maintaining their legal student visa status while supplementing their education with employment directly related to their areas of study in the United States,” investigators said. “Moreover, having more complete data in SEVIS on foreign students working under OPT could help strengthen ICE’s efforts to identify and assess potential risks to OPT.”

[American Patriot]

You know the government never had track of them right?

They will do their utmost to track down Americans in foreign countries to steal their fucking money in "taxes" but they will let terrorist assholes in without paying attention.

What kind of country is this?

[vector7]

Why bother with immigration reform? Sign up for Ocare and become an automatic citizen!

Quote:

President Obama on Tuesday sought to assure legal immigrants that they can sign up for ObamaCare without worrying that “the immigration people” will come for family members who are in the country illegally. In an interview with Univision Deportes, a Spanish-language sports radio show, Obama said immigration officials won’t have access to the personal information that consumers provide when signing up for healthcare on the new exchanges. “Well, the main thing for people to know is that any information you get, you know, asked with respect to buying insurance, does not have anything to do with … the rules governing immigration,” Obama said. “And you know, you can qualify if you’re a legal resident, if you are … legally present in the United States. You know, if you have a family where some people are citizens or legally here, and others are not documented, the immigration people will never get that information.” “You know, you will qualify, you know, regardless of what your family’s status is,” Obama said on Tuesday. “So, you know, people should not hold back just because they’re in a mixed-family status.”

http://thehill.com/blogs/healthwatch...-hispanics-the

[Ryan Ruck]

Trump Wants To Legalize 'Dreamers,' Admit Huge Number Of New Immigrants

December 8, 2016

Donald Trump says he wants more legal immigration – a lot of it.

President-elect Donald Trump veered off his anti-immigration message Tuesday night and told a crowd in North Carolina that hundreds of thousands of immigrants will come in during his administration.

"We are going to stop people coming into this country illegally but we are going to be having people come into our country – and they are going to come in by the thousands and the hundreds of thousands – but they are going to come in, they are going to come in, legally," Trump said. "But by the hundreds of thousands. We want people to come in but they have to come in legally."

Why? We have enormous unassimilated pockets of America where nary a word of English is heard. Shouldn't our first priority be to assimilate the immigrants we have before we admit even more? Trump's comments are disappointing.

(Not to mention the millions that need forced off generational welfare and put to work!)

Trump also said children of illegal aliens, so-called "Dreamers," will be happy with what he has planned for them.

President-elect Donald J. Trump on Wednesday appeared to soften his stance on whether to deport the more than 700,000 young people who entered the country illegally as children and were permitted to stay by President Obama.

"We're going to work something out that's going to make people happy and proud," Mr. Trump told Time magazine. "They got brought here at a very young age, they've worked here, they've gone to school here. Some were good students. Some have wonderful jobs. And they're in never-never land because they don't know what's going to happen."

Trump talks like a liberal. I feel as though I'm reading a transcript from an NPR show. He's showing more empathy for illegal aliens than he is for American citizens. Shouldn't it be the concerns of Americans he should be considering first, before the feelings of illegals? These people are taking taxpayer money and American jobs, some committing crimes, and many are not assimilating and speaking English, and Trump wants them to stay?

Ever since Trump posed for a photo with illegal aliens, it's been obvious where his true sympathies lie. While I believe he may do many good things as president, such as build a border wall (now reduced to a fence), possibly appoint good judges, and reduce regulations, I think, based on Trump's own words, that most of our illegal aliens are here to stay. Because if the kids are being allowed to stay, surely their parents will be as well.

What ever happened to