Obamnesty is Here!

Illegal alien amnesty is no longer the theoretical consideration of federal immigration officials inside the Obama administration. No more musings by Obama administration bureaucrats on how best to bypass Congress and implement illegal alien amnesty in stealth.

The secret is now out. And, as reported by The New York Times, illegal alien amnesty is now the official policy of the United States of America, courtesy of the Obama administration:

The Department of Homeland Security will begin a review on Thursday (November 17) of all deportation cases before the immigration courts and start a nationwide training program for enforcement agents and prosecuting lawyers, with the goal of speeding deportations of convicted criminals and halting those of many illegal immigrants with no criminal record.

The accelerated triage of the court docket — about 300,000 cases — is intended to allow severely overburdened immigration judges to focus on deporting foreigners who committed serious crimes or pose national security risks, Homeland Security officials said. Taken together, the review and the training, which will instruct immigration agents on closing deportations that fall outside the department’s priorities, are designed to bring sweeping changes to the immigration courts and to enforcement strategies of field agents nationwide.

First off, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) should have but one priority: Protect American citizens by enforcing the law. The vast majority of American citizens believe if a law’s worth having it’s worth enforcing, including laws that prohibit people from sneaking across the border and living in the shadows, often on the taxpayer’s dime! But not this White House. This White House simply picks and chooses which laws it wishes to enforce based on its own whims and political and election needs. And that is a sure path to chaos, confusion and discontent.

And don’t believe for a second the Obama administration’s line that criminal illegal aliens won’t find themselves “outside the department’s priorities.”

Judicial Watch uncovered documents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) proving that immigration officials were urged to use “prosecutorial discretion” to dismiss deportation proceedings against a wide variety of illegal alien criminals — including those convicted of serious crimes such as sexual assault, solicitation of murder, aggravated assault, assaulting a police officer, and kidnapping, as well as numerous drug charges.

Of course, the Obama administration’s tired justification for its new “amnesty” policy is that the system is too stressed to enforce federal immigration laws. This is an excuse, not a reason, to purposely give amnesty (and the authorization to work!) to illegal aliens. After all, we’re talking about an administration that doled out half a billion dollars to the now bankrupt energy company Solyndra. And that’s just a tiny drop in the overflowing bailout bucket. Couldn’t even a small portion of the trillions of taxpayer dollars now “invested” in Solyndra or in the ACORN network be better spent helping to resolve the illegal immigration crisis?

Most Americans would answer with an emphatic “yes!”

I can’t help but think this move by the Obama administration to effectively “legalize” millions of illegal aliens is intended to create a new community of dependable liberal voters (legal and illegal) just in time for the 2012 elections. That appears to be the record of this White House: tossing bones to key voting groups by crafting policies that undermine the rule of law but satisfy their “special interests.” (See: Black Panthers, La Raza, and DOMA for just a few such examples.) And that is simply indefensible.

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, Judicial Watch is in the midst of a massive campaign to tell Barack Obama and the governors of all 50 states that Americans want our immigration laws enforced. In fact, in early November we delivered 85,010 petitions to the president with that very message. As I said in my cover letter that accompanied the petitions: “Your administration must obey the law and not implement amnesty through administrative measures or under the ruse of prosecutorial discretion.”

You can be sure that your Judicial Watch will continue its leadership role to investigate and litigate in order to expose and stop Obamnesty and all other efforts to undermine our nation’s laws against illegal immigration. For a good summary of our effective work in this area, please click here.