Obama Claims Stealth Amnesty Has Secured Our Borders
Ben Johnson, Floyd Reports
The Obama administration is in overdrive to claim credit for a newly released report showing a decline in the number of illegal immigrants. The Pew Hispanic Center found that “only” 300,000 illegal immigrants entered the United States each year from March 2007 to March 2009. Since Obama took office in late January 2009, how he deserves credit is a mystery to everyone except The One. The fact is, George W. Bush does not deserve (much) credit, either. The report credits two developments with the slowing of the border invasion: greater enforcement of the law — begun by Bush to get support for an amnesty program — and something vastly more significant, the econoic downturn. With jobs scarce, there were fewer “jobs Americans won’t do.” The Pew study states this made many illegals already in the United States leave and fewer not yet here come. It also points out Texas, one of the strongest states economically, has seen virtually no decline.
If Obama is claiming credit for tanking the U.S. economy with his massive debt and ever-expanding social spending programs, we’re happy to let him.
It’s petty to claim credit for Bush administration successes, although Obama is by no means averse to that. Department of Homeland Security deputy press secretary Matt Chandler said, “This administration’s unprecedented commitment of manpower, technology and infrastructure to the Southwest border has been a major factor in this dramatic drop in illegal crossings.”
Obama’s border program has been a disaster for the entire country, most especially border states like Arizona. In essence, he waved the white flag before the narcotics gangsters waging a low-scale war on the border, posting signs 100 miles from the border to scare away…American citizens. Southern Arizona is occupied territory. The signs may as well read, “Abandon HOPE, all ye who enter here.”
His drive to give amnesty to a largely Democratic voting base has weakened our already permeable border. He has dismissed lawsuits against illegal immigrants. He has sued the state of Arizona over its common sense immigration law, even hauling the state before human rights abusers at the UN.
Today, the Justice Department sued Sheriff Joe Arpaio yet again, as it had threatened to do, allegedly because he is not cooperating with their investigation. The problem, according to Arpaio’s attorney, is….
Video of the Day: Lou Dobbs on “De Facto Amnesty”
Is Obama’s New Ambassador a Communist “Asset” (Or Just a Racist)?
Ben Johnson, Floyd Reports
Before setting off on his sixth vacation of the year in elite Martha’s Vineyard, Barack Obama made four recess appointments. Credible sources report the FBI once listed one of them as a Communist “asset.”
Aponte lived with Roberto Tamayo, whom Clinton administration officials described as an agent of the Cuban intelligence agency Dirección General de Inteligencia (DGI). In 1993, a Cuban defector named Florentino Aspillaga said Tamayo tried to recruit Aponte on behalf of the Castro regime. Aponte acknowledges that FBI officials found “minor inconsistencies” in her story. When asked, she refused to take a polygraph.
Sen. Jim DeMint, R-SC, flagged her nomination in March citing “serious concerns” with her history and the fact that “we have not received all of the information we have requested.” He and other Senate Republicans asked to see her FBI file.
Instead, Obama put her in the seat in a way that bypassed the Senate’s advice and consent function. He made used a recess appointment, just as he did in appointing Donald Berwick, the proponent of rationed care Obama tapped to run Medicare and Medicaid. Then Obama made the announcement on a news dump, in hopes the story would die over the weekend.
Defenders of Aponte insist she was “cleared” by the FBI, citing an article in the Miami Herald from 1999 . However, the article does not cite the FBI; it quotes an administration official who offered no specifics. The article that Media Matters uses to vindicate Aponte concludes, “Whether or not there was ever a Cuban attempt to recruit Aponte remains unclear.”
The unclear all-clear was sounded by the Herald‘s source, Bob Nash, who went on to serve as vice chairman of ShoreBank before becoming Hillary Clinton’s deputy campaign manager in 2007. (Chicago journalist Lynn Sweet noted, “The Clintons, Nash and ShoreBank…have a long, interconnected history.” ShoreBank will soon reopen as the Urban Partnership Bank.)
The Clinton administration was not particularly conscientious about national security or its officials’ private lives. The GOP could be forgiven for wanting more confirmation than the word of a ShoreBank exec.
Whether Aponte was ever an “asset” of DGI, she does not attempt to deny her role in promoting Open Borders and amnesty.
Aponte has been on the board of directors of the National Council of La Raza and the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund (PRLDEF). The latter organization, which is now known as LatinoJustice PRLDEF, was long headed by Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Sotomayor signed a 1981 memo – which she failed to disclose to the Senate – declaring “capital punishment is associated with evident racism in our society.’’ In the 1980s, PRLDEF issued a press release calling Puerto Rican FALN terrorists “fighters for freedom and justice, for liberation.” PRLDEF filed suits forcing teachers in Ann Arbor, Michigan, to learn “Black English,” and accusing the New York Police Department or racism because too few minorities passed its promotions exam.
The National Council of La Raza (“the Race”) is infamous for its support of Open Borders, drivers licenses for illegals, in-state tuition for non-citizens, and its undying hostility to border enforcement. Obama’s Director of Intergovernmental Affairs, Cecilia Munoz, was vice president of La Raza and is the administration’s top cheerleader for amnesty — sorry, “comprehensive immigration reform.”
Aponte’s extensive funding of the Democratic Party, including the president, raises questions about whether the ambassadorship was a payback. She has donated $49,910 exclusively to Democrats, including Ted Kennedy, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, Hilda Solis, and $2,300 to Barack Obama in 2008.
So, the question remains: Is she a Commie, a crony, or an Hispanic racist?Is the president who appointed her a radical, a rewarder, or a race-baiter?
It is despicable that Americans have to ask these questions of their president.
Smoking Gun Memo on Obama’s Force-through Amnesty
By Robert VerBruggen, National Review Online
According to an internal U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services memo going the rounds of Capitol Hill and obtained by National Review, the agency is considering ways in which it could enact “meaningful immigration reform absent legislative action” — that is, without the consent of the American people through a vote in Congress.
“This memorandum offers administrative relief options to . . . reduce the threat of removal for certain individuals present in the United States without authorization,” it reads.
Also: “In the absence of Comprehensive Immigration Reform, USCIS can extend benefits and/or protections to many individuals and groups by issuing new guidance and regulations, exercising discretion with regard to parole-in-place, deferred action and the issuance of Notices to Appear (NTA), and adopting significant process improvements.”
In recent weeks, Sen. Chuck Grassley and others in Congress have been pressing the administration to disavow rumors that a de facto amnesty is in the works, including in a letter to Department of Homeland Security head Janet Napolitano. “Since the senators first wrote to the president more than a month ago, we have not been reassured that the plans are just rumors, and we have every reason to believe that the memo is legitimate,” a Grassley spokesman tells NR. (NR contacted DHS, but a spokesman did not have a comment on the record.)
Many of the memo’s proposals are technical and fine-grained; for example, it suggests clarifying the immigration laws for “unaccompanied minors, and for victims of human trafficking, domestic violence, and other criminal activities.” It also proposes extending the “grace period” H-1B visa holders have between the expiration of their visa and the date they’re expected to leave the country.
Read the Memo
Obama puts Amnesty Advocate in charge of immigration
By Stephen Clark, Fox News
The Obama administration has tapped an outspoken critic of immigration enforcement on the local level to oversee and promote partnerships between federal and local officials on the issue.
Harold Hurtt, a former police chief in Houston and Phoenix, has been hired as the director for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Office of State and Local Coordination. Starting July 6, Hurtt will supervise outreach and communication between ICE, local law enforcement agencies, tribal leaders and representatives from non-governmental organizations.
"Chief Hurtt is a respected member of the law enforcement community and understands the concerns of local law enforcement leaders," said John Morton, the Homeland Security assistant secretary for ICE. "His experience and skills will be an invaluable asset to the ICEs outreach and coordination efforts."
