Unfortunately, this bit of news really isn’t surprising. According to America’s Voice, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano today proudly stated the Obama Administration has granted fewer deferred actions than did the Bush Administration in its last year in office. A deferred action allows individuals a stay in deportation, usually because of compelling humanitarian concerns and is given at prosecutorial discretion.
Napolitano’s answer to a question posed by Sen. Chuck Grassley, Republican of Iowa, fits the misguided strategy the Obama Administration has followed for the past two years. As Roxie Bacon, an ex-Obama immigration official, recently wrote in a post for a law journal, the administration is bent on winning over immigration reform opponents by showing its toughness, seemingly with little concern for the devastation these policies are causing and showing surprising naivety in thinking they can ever satisfy the enforcement lust of GOP hard-liners.
Sen. Grassley’s questions were prompted by a memo leaked last year proposing administrative actions DHS could pursue to temper laws that by Napolitano’s admission need revising. Napolitano told Grassley the administration granted fewer than 900 deferred actions during FY2010 while deporting more than 395,000 immigrants.
What is surprising is that a hardliner like Grassley seemed a bit stunned that the number was so low. The Obama Administration should note that number, however, will never be low enough for Grassley to endorse reform that promotes family unity, protects all workers and allows everyone to live freely and without fear of deportation. Ever.
The american public is unaware of what happens right under its nose. USCIS director Mayorkas is bent on circumventing the need to carefully screen applicants for any kind of immigration benefits in this country. Mayorkas is a strange individual who asks his employees to call him “Aly” instead of addressing him properly as his position would demand. Not a first generation american, he seems to want to allow all illegal immigrants to stay in the US because he himself came here as a Cuban. Thus, he is biased and does not have the neutral and legal frame of mind to lead the agency. USICS in fact does the opposite of the other much more law enforcement agencies under the Dept of Homeland Security, to wit; Customs and Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. While the latter are tasked with curbing illegal immigration, the former wants to allow illegals in and invite fraudulent and frivoulous applications for political asylum in order to keep the Asylum Offices unnecesarily and artificially staffed. The vast majority of applications for asylum in this country have become outrageously frivolous because it is so easy for them to be granted by the liberal agency officers in charge, starting at the top with Mayorkas, whom senator Grassley recently admonished (Google this) for ordering the granting of applications fraught with fraud and lies. It’s bizzare but true. The logic behind this dangerous and flawed way of thinking seems to be that most illegal immigrants must really have the need to be here so if one bad apple occassionaly slips through it is worth it. Fine; tell that to the victims of 9/11.