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| The number of children crossing the U.S. border alone has doubled since last year. More than three-quarters of unaccompanied minors are from mostly poor and violent towns in three countries: El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. Children from Mexico, once the largest group, now make up less than a quarter of the total. Graphic Credit: New York Times |
President Barack Obama's Human Trafficking Efforts Become FedEx-ing
Immigration of human beings into the United States use to be a semi-orderly process.
A high level of respect for our borders and political culture governed by the Rule-Of-Law by other humans not born in this country was an assumed standard. Further, laws were passed by Congress to address special situations where labor needs, education access, and political upheaval could be addressed with the assumption always being that our citizens elected to office would perform their Oath Of Office and enforce the laws to the best of their ability.
Over the last decade, this respect and political culture governed by the Rule-Of-Law has degraded to the point where our Executive Branch no longer enforces the existing laws on immigration but have sought to foment a form of (through assumption and formal agreement) multiple government human trafficking. Mexico, in response to President Obama's 2012 Deferred Action of Childhood Arrivals - DACA (Dream Act) proclamation of executive fiat, has opened up and fast-tracked the approval of Visa's allowing ANYBODY 72 hours to pass from their southern border to the southern border of the United States. Further, Mexico has been working directly with "feeder governments" (Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, etc.) on agreements that would aid in a seamless streamlining of the Visa process to allow more people to leave their countries and pass through North to the United States.
For the Executive Branch's part in this, the President has instructed all main border patrol management locations be moved back from the border by about 40 miles, and have them pick-up people they determine to be undocumented and perform a form of "catch and release" by having those processed sign a promise to appear for a case hearing on their immigration status. Some of these people that are processed are even given transportation to a destination of their choice within the United States, at taxpayer expense, where these people disappear into the country and never show up for their hearing of determination on their immigration status.
This expansion into not respecting our borders and political culture governed by the Rule-Of-Law has now been taken up by the Executive Branch of the United States backed by many in both houses of Congress. Lawlessness on immigration policy and established law is beginning to rule the day.
Rule by Executive proclamation and Congressional inactivity is becoming our de facto process for a path to citizenship for people who just happen to show up and set up shop in our country.
It is as if someone on the street found out where you live, finds and unlocked sliding door, and just make themselves residents in your living room ... eat out of your kitchen from a refrigerator you stock, bathe in the bathrooms that you clean and tend, take away your job for less pay, and expect you to keep the roof over their head.
President Barack Obama's human trafficking efforts through proposed Executive proclamation have, as defined, become a process of setting a formal in-country processing center for FedEx-ing non-citizens into the United States.
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| President Obama will sit down Friday with the presidents of Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala - the three countries that have been the greatest source of children illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. Image Credit: FOX News via mediamatters.org |
This excerpted and edited from the New York Times -
U.S. Considering Refugee Status for Hondurans
By FRANCES ROBLES and MICHAEL D. SHEAR - NYT - JULY 24, 2014
Hoping to stem the recent surge of migrants at the Southwest border, the Obama administration is considering whether to allow hundreds of minors and young adults from Honduras into the United States without making the dangerous trek through Mexico, according to a draft of the proposal.
If approved, the plan would direct the government to screen thousands of children and youths in Honduras to see if they can enter the United States as refugees or on emergency humanitarian grounds. It would be the first American refugee effort in a nation reachable by land to the United States, the White House said, putting the violence in Honduras on the level of humanitarian emergencies in Haiti and Vietnam, where such programs have been conducted in the past amid war and major crises.
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By moving decisions on refugee claims to Honduras, the plan aims to slow the rush of minors crossing into the United States illegally from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, which has overwhelmed the border this year. More than 45,000 unaccompanied minors from those three nations have arrived since Oct. 1, straining federal resources to the point that some agencies will exhaust their budgets by next month, the secretary of Homeland Security has said.
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Administration officials stressed that no decision had been made to move forward, saying the idea was one of many being discussed by officials at the White House and the Departments of State, Homeland Security, Justice, and Health and Human Services.
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The proposal, prepared by several federal agencies, says the pilot program under consideration would cost up to $47 million over two years, assuming 5,000 applied and about 1,750 people were accepted. If successful, it would be adopted in Guatemala and El Salvador as well. It is unclear how the administration determined those estimates, given that since Oct. 1 more than 16,500 unaccompanied children traveled to the United States from Honduras alone.
Children would be interviewed by American immigration employees trained to deal with minors, and a resettlement center would be set up in the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa, with assistance from international organizations like the International Organization for Migration.
The plan would be similar to a recent bill introduced by Senators John McCain and Jeff Flake of Arizona, who proposed increasing the number of refugee visas to the three Central American countries by 5,000 each.
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Mark Krikorian, the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which supports tighter controls on immigration, said that the proposal would increase, not stem, the flood of migrants from Central America trying to get into the United States.
“It’s clearly a bad idea,” Mr. Krikorian said. “Orders of magnitude more people will apply for refugee status if they can just do it from their home countries.”
He added that the proposal would allow people to claim to be refugees from their countries with “nothing more than a bus ride to the consulate. We’re talking about, down the road, an enormous additional flow of people from those countries.”
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Under American law, refugees are people fleeing their country of origin based on fears of persecution by reason of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group.
The only category that would seem to apply is “social group,” experts said, but there is disagreement on what that means. Some contend that children could count as a group, but others say the refugee requirements are stricter, and would not apply to people fleeing general crime and violence.
“What is a social group?” said Muzaffar Chishti, director of migration policies for the Migration Policy Institute’s New York office. “This is going to create a huge deal of debate. You will see a lot of law developing on it.”
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When a similar plan was adopted in Haiti, as a way to keep people from taking to the high seas, he said, it was ultimately criticized because Haitians already in the United States did not receive help. “It ended up being counterproductive to the goal,” Mr. Appleby said.
Stacie Blake, the director of government relations for the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, an advocacy group, said the processing of potential refugees in Central America could be handled by the United States or by the United Nations, which makes refugee determinations in many other countries. She said some of the people designated as refugees in Honduras could end up in countries other than the United States.
“It’s a way to help folks avoid life-threatening escapes and journeys,” Ms. Blake said. “It’s a good idea. It’s a tested idea.”
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On Friday, Mr. Obama is scheduled to meet with the presidents of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador at the White House in an effort to urge the Central American leaders to do more to help stem the flow of children fleeing their countries for the United States.
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Critics of the plan were quick to pounce, saying it appeared to redefine the legal definition of a refugee and would only increase the flow of migration to the United States. Administration officials said they believed the plan could be enacted through executive action, without congressional approval, as long as it did not increase the total number of refugees coming into the country.
[Reference Here]
So the agencies of this United States government, under this re-definition of refugee status, will be setting up shops in the form of refugee processing centers in targeted countries on which refugees are deemed, then shipped (presumably by plane) into the United States - Welcome to the age of "FedEx-ing" our immigration system through Executive Branch proclamation.
Do not be surprised to hear, before this 44th President leaves office - ending Carter's Second Term, that President Barack Obama P-A-R-D-O-N-S all people breaking the law by being here in the United States illegally ... and grants them full citizenship through Executive Order.
