Ann Corcoran, editor of Refugee Resettlement Watch, appeared on Fox News on Thursday morning to discuss the refugee aspect to Obama’s open border. www.limitstogrowth.org
(Spare video link.)
CORCORAN: This is Obama’s continued lawlessness on the whole subject of immigration. This is the purview of Congress. The President is expanding refugee law and in fact this should be done through Congress. . . .
One of the things people don’t understand about the refugee resettlement program is that it is the most desirable form, in my view, of immigration because those refugees who are designated refugees are given all forms of welfare virtually upon arrival in the United States: subsidized housing, food stamps, healthcare, job counseling and training. . . .
We have a lot of sympathy for poor people in other countries but this will open our gates to any country in the world who says I want my poor children to come to America as a refugee. . . .
My biggest problem is the lawlessness coming from the White House on this particular issue. I followed the refugee program for the last seven years; this is a major jump in expansion of the program. I also think that immigration is our existential threat in this country, both the numbers and who we are bringing in.
As we know, open borders allow Obama to admit millions of future big-government Democrats.
Corcoran was quoted on the topic a few days ago in the Daily Caller:
Obama Expands Immigration Via Border Security Plan, By Neil Munro, Daily Caller, February 9, 2015
President Obama’s new border security plan is being expanded to allow illegals in the United States to bring their children, their adult children, their grandchildren and even step-parents into the United States.
Obama is opening “a whole new pipeline for legal migration,” said Ann Corcoran, editor of Refugee Resettlement Watch.
Once the new program is established, future officials can expand it to include more economic migrants from more poor countries, she told The Daily Caller.
The program was initially announced last November as a fix for the fast-growing wave of “unaccompanied alien children” that were being escorted by coyotes to the Texas border, on behalf of parents living illegally in the United States. After the children and youths were delivered to the U.S. border agency, Obama’s deputies completed the contracts by delivering the children to their parents.
The program is called the “In-Country Refugee/Parole Processing for Minors in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala,” or the “Central American Minors – CAM” program.
The expansion was announced Feb. 9. “This program is primarily aimed at minors,” from El Salvador, Guatemala or Honduras, said the Feb. 9 statement from the Department of Homeland Security.
But “unmarried children of the qualifying child who are under the age of 21 can be included as derivatives… [and] a parent [by marriage] of the qualifying child may be included if he/she is part of the same household and economic unit as the qualifying child.”
New spouses will be eligible, if “he/she is legally married to the qualifying parent at the time the qualifying parent files the CAM-Affidavit of Relationship.”
The rules means that current unmarried illegals will also be allowed to marry people in Central America, and then sponsor them for the extremely valuable prizes of U.S. residency and citizenship.
The expansion also means that Obama will allow even the grandchildren and adult children of illegal immigrants to be given residency, citizenship, free use of government aid and entry into crowded classrooms alongside undereducated American kids. Many of the Central Americans children and youths have little education and many don’t speak English.
The Feb. 9 announcement also allows a wide range of illegal immigrants to import their families. For example, it can be used by foreigners — including convicted criminals — who can’t be deported because their home countries won’t accept them. It is also open to the roughly 5 million beneficiaries of Obama’s disputed 2012 and 2014 amnesties, and would give them legal means to win permanent residency.
It is also being offered to so-called parolees, who are legally inadmissible, but are let enter the country for humanitarian reasons. Up to 4,000 migrants will be allowed into the United States via the program in 2015.
Under existing law, Obama does not need approval from Congress to increase the number of migrants. Since 2009, the country has accepted roughly 6 million legal immigrants under long-established laws, plus an additional 5.46 million migrants who were given work-permits under a variety of programs.
That’s roughly 2 million immigrants each year who compete for jobs sought by the roughly 4 million Americans who turn 18 each year.
The program is being run in cooperation with federal contractors, such as Catholic Charities, said Corcoran. Those contractors will lobby Congress to keep the program funded until the public elects pro-American legislators to Congress, she said. Ethnic groups will also support the program, partly because it allows new economic migrants quick access to the many federal welfare and aid programs that are normally off-limits to illegal immigrants.
The document does not set any age, education or health requirements for possible migrants, despite the cost of low-skill households to taxpaying Americans.
In general, each unskilled immigrant household receives federal aid roughly equal in value to the extra taxes paid by a household of U.S. college graduates. For example, Obama’s award of work-permits to 4 million lower-skilled illegal immigrants will cost roughly $40 billion each year for the next 5 decades.
The cost of Obama’s generosity to the 4 million is equivalent to 30 cents extra for every gallon of gas bought by Americans. Or a $10 monthly fee added to every cellphone. Or a $22,000 tax on every American graduate’s four-year college degree. Obama’s immigration policies are very unpopular. For example, only seven percent of Americans want a higher rate of immigration, according to a new Gallup poll.
In 2014, his top-priority push in Congress to increase immigration was derailed when the public saw roughly 130,000 illegals flood across the border. The influx included unaccompanied children, young men and many unskilled adult women with minor children.
Obama has the legal authority to immediately repatriate migrants. But he choose to let them stay in the United States and apply for refugees status in overcrowded immigration courts.
Since last August, Obama has also made deals with Mexico and the three Central American governments to block the northward flow of migrants towards the Texas border.
Those deals, however, may not offset the huge incentive for migrants to rush the border this spring. That’s because Obama’s new 2014 amnesty would give work permits to at least 4 million illegals in the United States, and has repatriated only a very small number of the 130,000 migrants who crossed in 2014.
Instead, the vast majority of the 130,000 migrants were released into the United States, and the many adults are being awarded work-permits to let them compete against Americans for jobs.
In November 2014, one in every five U.S. jobs was held by a foreign-born worker, up from one-in-six jobs in January 2010, according to federal data highlighted by the Center for Immigration Studies. Since 2000, Americans’ wages have stalled.
Each year, 4 million young Americans begin competing for jobs against at least 10 million unemployed Americans, against 2 million annual new legal migrants and against a resident pool of roughly 2 million guest-workers.
Obama has suggested that Americans don’t have the right to block immigration. “There have been periods where the folks who were already here suddenly say, ‘Well, I don’t want those folks,’ even though the only people who have the right to say that are some Native Americans,” Obama said in a November speech in Chicago.
Obama also believes that greater immigration will boost progressives’ political power. “People are getting more and more comfortable with the diversity of this country, much more sophisticated about both the cultural differences but more importantly, the basic commonality that we have,” he said Jan. 23.
