Observers will now have time to do what lawmakers couldn’t: Read the omnibus funding bill which Congress waved through.
For one thing, it fully-funded the President’s refugee resettlement operation. The inclusion of this provision is a policy win for Marco Rubio, who told Sean Hannity last month that he’d “hate to use” Congress’ power of the purse to block Obama’s refugee resettlement program.
Conservatives commentators are suggesting the omnibus could also provide new insight to a Rubio presidency.
“The Ryan Omnibus is a good preview of Priorities in a Rubio Presidency,” tweeted nationally-syndicated talk radio host Laura Ingraham.
“Paul Ryan is the new Rubio,” wrote conservative columnist Ann Coulter after the revelation that Ryan’s was whipping conservatives to fund and expand President Obama’s immigration agenda.
And now another provision has come to light in the Gang of Eight bill that could help to further define the policy contours of a Rubio administration.
Within the sprawling 1,200 page legislation, Rubio’s bill contained a provision—Section 2310 “Fiancée and Fiance Child Status Protection”— which would have dramatically expanded the controversial K-1 visa by allowing non-citizens living in the country to bring in not only their foreign fiancés, but also the children of their foreign fiancés.
The “Fiancé” visa has come under national scrutiny in recent weeks following reports that Tashfeen Malik, the Pakistani-born wife of Syed Farook, had entered the country on a K-1 visa. Together Farook and his Jihadi bride carried out the deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil since 9/11. Farook’s presence in the United States— like his wife’s—was entirely the result of our nation’s federal policy of visa issuances: Farook’s parents were Paksitani immigrants.
The San Bernardino attack prompted Jeff Sessions and Ted Cruz to demand administration officials release immigration histories of the attackers and their parents. Senator Rubio, by contrast, did not seem to think Farook’s family’s immigration history was relevant— emphasizing to the millions of Americans watching Tuesday night’s presidential debate that Farook was an “American.”
ISIS is, “actively recruiting Americans. The attacker in San Bernardino was an American citizen, born and raised in this country,” Rubio said. “This is a radical jihadist group that is increasing sophisticated in its ability, for example, to radicalize American citizens,” Rubio declared. “They are recruiting people, including Americans, to join them, with the promise that they are joining this apocalyptic movement that is going to defeat the West.”
Rubio did not mention that the only reason Farook as an American citizen was because he was born here after his Pakistani parents were given visas to come to America. Sessions and Cruz had addressed this in their joint letter, stating:
In our struggle against terrorism, we are dealing with an enemy that has shown it is not only capable of bypassing U.S. screening, but of recruiting and radicalizing Muslim migrants after their entry to the United States. The recruitment of terrorists in the U.S. is not limited to adult migrants, but to their young children and to their U.S.-born children – which is why family immigration history is necessary to understand the nature of the threat.
As Coulter wrote of the Farook family:
San Bernardino shooter Syed Farouk’s mother described his father — the original immigrant — this way: “My husband is mentally ill and is on medication but is also an alcoholic and drinks with the medicine.”
Fantastic. So glad we got him. The father, who has been here since 1973 — thanks, Teddy Kennedy! — told an Italian newspaper that he preached moderation to his son, saying it’s not worth fighting Israel, because Russia, China and the U.S. “don’t want Jews there any more.” In “two years,” he assured his son, “Israel will not exist any more.”
So after four decades in American culture, these highly integrated, model immigrants are still clinging to their insane magic potion fantasies.
The senior Farouk didn’t come here to work in some highly complex technical field, like nuclear physics or cell extraction biology. He’s a truck driver. So one American lost his job as a truck driver and 14 Americans lost their lives because of Ted Kennedy’s 1965 immigration act.
Under current law, only U.S. citizens are allowed to bring in fiancés into the country on a K-1 visa. Rubio’s immigration bill, however, would have expanded the program to allow non-citizens residing in the country as lawful permanent residents (LPRs) to bring in their intended spouses and children as well.
Section 2310 reads as follows:
Amending Section 101(a)(15)(K) of Immigration and Nationality Act to “insert” and thereby allow applications from “an alien lawfully admitted for permanent residence” will result in a sizable expansion of the K visa program. According to data from the Department of Homeland Security, Rubio would have expanded the pool of eligible U.S. residents to import foreign finances by over 10 million (specifically, 13 million as of 2012).
Moreover, the bill is written specifically to allow non-citizens to bring in their adult-aged “children.” The bill states that, “a determination of the age of such child is made using the age of the alien on the date on which the fiance, fiancee, or immigrant visa petition is filed.” This means that if the non-citizen files the application for his 17-year-old child, and it takes 5 years for the petition, the 23-year-old non-child is still considered a child.
As with most other provisions in the Gang of Eight bill, Rubio has never been asked about this language, instead only being asked easily-answered questions about his “path to citizenship” that he is well accustomed to answering. Similarly, FOX News has not delved deeply into the contents of the Gang of Eight bill; Rupert Murdoch sits on the board of a group which endorsed and lobbied for Rubio’s bill.
This provision is consistent with other positions Rubio has taken. For instance, following the Paris and San Bernadino attacks, Rubio has continued to advocate for the admission of Syrian Refugees under a “common sense” vetting test.
Similarly, Rubio voted against an amendment offered by Rand Paul and supported by Jeff Sessions and Ted Cruz, which aimed to pause immigration from Muslim countries with sizable Jihadist movements.
In 2013, when Rubio was working tirelessly to push his La Raza-backed immigration plan through the Senate, Rubio would not let the Boston Bombing slow down his drive for passage. After the Tsarnaev brothers— two Muslim Chechen migrants—carried out the attacks in April of 2013— which disfigured, maimed and wounded 264 people, and killed 3– Rubio made clear his intent to press his Gang of Eight bill onward.
When Iowa Congressman Steve King suggested that, in light of the attack, Congress should be skeptical about moving forward with the bill, Rubio struck back. “We should really be very cautious about using language that links these two things in any way,” Rubio declared. “We don’t know who carried it out or why they carried it out, and I would caution everyone to be very careful about linking the two.”
Yet even after it had become public knowledge that the Boston Bombers had immigrated into country, Rubio continued to push for expanding immigration, tweeting: “#BostonBombing not excuse 4 inaction on #immigrationreform.But disagree with Sen.Leahy,if it exposed flaws in system we need to know & fix.”
Despite claims that he wanted to “fix flaws” in the system, according to then-USCIS union president Ken Palinkas, “The USCIS Council was not consulted in the crafting of the Gang of Eight’s legislation… Instead, the legislation was written with special interests, producing a bill that makes the current system worse, not better. [The Gang of Eight bill] will damage public safety and national security and should be opposed by lawmakers.” USCIS union represents 12,000 United States Citizenship and Immigration Service Officers.
Similarly, ICE council President Chris Crane said.“Senator Rubio left unchanged legislation that he himself admitted to us in private was detrimentally flawed and must be changed.”
“He [Rubio] directly misled law enforcement officers,” Crane said. “Legislation written behind closed doors by handpicked special interest groups which put their political agendas and financial gains before sound and effective law and the welfare and safety of the American public.”
Analysis reveals that the Gang of Eight bill would have substantially increased Muslim immigration and made it easier to bring refugees inside the United States. As Conservative Review‘s Daniel Horowitz noted, “section 3405 (page 693), which created an entire new pipeline for refugees… In totality, this bill would have created endless avenues for this president to bring in an unlimited numbers of Islamic immigrants from the most volatile corners of the world.” Yet just last month Rubio stood by the provision in his Pelosi-backed immigration plan, telling The Guardian that his 2013 bill would “strengthen the refugee program.”
Marco Rubio’s most recent immigration bill, the Immigration Innovation Act of 2015, would allow for virtually unlimited Muslim migration. The bill lifts green card caps and H-1B caps, even though the H-1B has been used to lay off Rubio’s own constituents employed at Disney Corporation. However, the bill does have support from many of Rubio’s financial boosters such as Microsoft and Oracle’s Larry Ellison. Interestingly, the bill has also been endorsed by the lobbying firm co-chaired by Disney CEO Bob Iger.
Michelle Malkin addressed this today, writing: “Facebook, Microsoft and Silicon Valley back Marco Rubio. Mark Zuckerberg is a social justice CEO who panders to Hispanics with his pro-amnesty, anti-deportation advocacy; Facebook is an H-1B visa dependent company working hard to obliterate hurdles to hiring an unlimited stream of cheap foreign tech workers… Zuckerberg personally donated to Rubio, as have pro-H-1B expansionist Silicon Valley CEOs from Oracle, Cisco and Seagate. Microsoft, founded by leading H-1B/amnesty cheerleader Bill Gates, has been Rubio’s No. 2 corporate donor the past five years.
The foreign-born population of the United States is it an all-time high of 42.4 million. New immigration is projected to swell the population another 103 million, Pew Research estimates, unless new immigration caps are put in place.
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