Obama Admin Plans More Executive Action on Immigration

he Obama administration is moving forward with plans to expand a waiver program that will allow additional illegal aliens to remain in the country rather than apply for legal status from abroad.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a proposed rule on Tuesday that would make changes to a waiver program created by President Barack Obama’s executive action on immigration in 2013. The action created a waiver that primarily allowed illegal immigrants with a U.S. citizen spouse or parent to stay in the country instead of having to leave the United States and be barred from returning for three or 10 years, if they proved their absence would create an “extreme hardship” for their spouse.

The new rule expands eligibility to a host of other categories of illegal immigrants beyond those with citizen spouses and parents.

“DHS proposes to expand the class of aliens who may be eligible for a provisional waiver beyond immediate relatives of U.S. citizens to aliens in all statutorily eligible immigrant visa categories,” the proposed rule stated. “Such aliens include family-sponsored immigrants, employment-based immigrants, certain special immigrants, and Diversity Visa program selectees, together with their derivative spouses and children.”

The waivers allow illegal immigrants to stay in the country while they await visas, and avoid a penalty under U.S. law that bars persons who entered the country illegally from returning for at least three years.

An illegal immigrant who lives in the country for less than a year and then leaves is barred from reentering the United States for three years. Any time spent illegally in the United States over one year results in the illegal immigrant being inadmissible for 10 years. The waiver program allowed individuals to remain in the country and avoid these penalties.

“It’s a very bad policy,” said Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies. “It makes it possible for illegal aliens to avoid the consequences established by Congress to deter people from settling here illegally and then laundering their status by adjusting to a green card.”

Vaughan, who has been following the issue for over two years, said the changes to the waiver program would increase fraud.

“It is a slap in the face to the many legal immigrants who abide by the law, follow the process, and wait their turn,” she said. “In addition, it will increase the likelihood of fraud in the marriage categories, which produce tens of thousands of new green cards each year.”

“Green cards are the golden ticket. Once you get a green cards you get welfare, you get tax credits, you get entitlements,” said a GOP Senate aide. “The U.S. hands out one million green cards every year, and these documents are bankrupting the country.”

DHS said it is proposing the rule based on its “broad authority” under the Homeland Security Act of 2002.

The rule would also broaden the category of those whom an illegal alien can claim their absence from the United States would create an “extreme hardship.” Previously, the waiver only could be given if the illegal immigrant has a spouse or parent who is an American citizen.

“DHS also proposes to expand who may be considered a qualifying relative for purposes of the extreme hardship determination to include [legal permanent resident] LPR spouses and parents,” the proposed rule said.

The agency said the rule is intended to “prioritize the family reunification of immediate relatives of U.S. citizens over other categories of aliens.”

“The president should not be issuing executive actions that serve only to expedite the legalization process for those who have ignored our laws,” said Vaughan. “This legalization gimmick is undermining the integrity of our legal immigration system, and Congress should take steps to block it.”

The public will have 60 days to comment on the proposal.

Via: WFB

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Obama Admin Plans More Executive Action on Immigration

The Obama administration is moving forward with plans to expand a waiver program that will allow additional illegal aliens to remain in the country rather than apply for legal status from abroad.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a proposed rule on Tuesday that would make changes to a waiver program created by President Barack Obama’s executive action on immigration in 2013. The action created a waiver that primarily allowed illegal immigrants with a U.S. citizen spouse or parent to stay in the country instead of having to leave the United States and be barred from returning for three or 10 years, if they proved their absence would create an “extreme hardship” for their spouse.

The new rule expands eligibility to a host of other categories of illegal immigrants beyond those with citizen spouses and parents.

“DHS proposes to expand the class of aliens who may be eligible for a provisional waiver beyond immediate relatives of U.S. citizens to aliens in all statutorily eligible immigrant visa categories,” the proposed rule stated. “Such aliens include family-sponsored immigrants, employment-based immigrants, certain special immigrants, and Diversity Visa program selectees, together with their derivative spouses and children.”

The waivers allow illegal immigrants to stay in the country while they await visas, and avoid a penalty under U.S. law that bars persons who entered the country illegally from returning for at least three years.

An illegal immigrant who lives in the country for less than a year and then leaves is barred from reentering the United States for three years. Any time spent illegally in the United States over one year results in the illegal immigrant being inadmissible for 10 years. The waiver program allowed individuals to remain in the country and avoid these penalties.

“It’s a very bad policy,” said Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies. “It makes it possible for illegal aliens to avoid the consequences established by Congress to deter people from settling here illegally and then laundering their status by adjusting to a green card.”

Vaughan, who has been following the issue for over two years, said the changes to the waiver program would increase fraud.

“It is a slap in the face to the many legal immigrants who abide by the law, follow the process, and wait their turn,” she said. “In addition, it will increase the likelihood of fraud in the marriage categories, which produce tens of thousands of new green cards each year.”

“Green cards are the golden ticket. Once you get a green cards you get welfare, you get tax credits, you get entitlements,” said a GOP Senate aide. “The U.S. hands out one million green cards every year, and these documents are bankrupting the country.”

DHS said it is proposing the rule based on its “broad authority” under the Homeland Security Act of 2002.

The rule would also broaden the category of those whom an illegal alien can claim their absence from the United States would create an “extreme hardship.” Previously, the waiver only could be given if the illegal immigrant has a spouse or parent who is an American citizen.

“DHS also proposes to expand who may be considered a qualifying relative for purposes of the extreme hardship determination to include [legal permanent resident] LPR spouses and parents,” the proposed rule said.

The agency said the rule is intended to “prioritize the family reunification of immediate relatives of U.S. citizens over other categories of aliens.”

“The president should not be issuing executive actions that serve only to expedite the legalization process for those who have ignored our laws,” said Vaughan. “This legalization gimmick is undermining the integrity of our legal immigration system, and Congress should take steps to block it.”

The public will have 60 days to comment on the proposal.

Via: WFB

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Obama Prepares More ‘Executive Actions’ On Global Warming

President Barack Obama is preparing to unleash a series of “executive actions” aimed at boosting the green energy industry as part of the president’s global warming agenda.

Obama is launching a “Clean Energy Impact Investment Center” at the Energy Department to “make information about energy and climate programs … accessible and more understandable to the public, including to mission-driven investors.”

The White House is also ordering the IRS to come out with guidance and rules to get nonprofits to invest in green energy technologies, along with creating more government financing options for small businesses looking to go green.

“Today’s announcements will help ensure that even more American-made clean energy technologies can make the leap from an idea, to the laboratory, to the global marketplace,” the White House said in a statement. “We look forward to continuing to unleash the power and potential of innovations that serve both our economy and our environment, and to the as-yet-unimagined breakthroughs still to come.”

The White House also took time to announce it had doubled the amount of green energy investment promises from the private sector, including $3.5 billion in commitments from environmental nonprofits and institutional investors.

President Obama has made tackling global warming a top priority during his second term in office, and it’s clear he wants to make signing a global climate treaty part of his presidential legacy. Administration officials have been working tirelessly to get other countries to sign onto a major carbon dioxide emissions reductions agreement later this year.

But the administration has seen mixed success on the diplomatic front, so it’s continuing to announce new regulations and executive orders aimed at reducing U.S. emissions. White House officials have continually argued that if other countries see the U.S. lead on emissions reductions they will follow suit.

“If I can encourage and gain commitments from the Chinese to put forward a serious plan to start curbing their greenhouse gases, and that then allows us to leverage the entire world for the conference that will be taking place later this year in Paris,” Obama told VICE News in an interview.

Via: Daily Caller

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The Ten Most Abusive Obama Executive Actions

President Obama has made liberal use of "executive action" throughout his presidency, and pledged to make even more use of executive action in this year's State of the Union speech. He seems to think that because Republicans don't want to implement his agenda, he can go around Congress.

The Heritage Foundation is out with a new report on President Obama's executive actions, titled "An Executive Unbound," finding that "abusive, unlawful, even potentially unconstitutional unilateral action has been a hallmark of the Obama Administration." They've also compiled a list of the top ten abusive executive actions taken by the President.

1. Amending Obamacare’s employer mandate, providing an unauthorized subsidy to congressional staff, and encouraging state insurance commissioners not to enforce certain requirements.
2 Inventing labor law “exemptions” in violation of the WARN Act so that workers would not receive notice of impending layoffs days before the 2012 election.
3. Waiving the mandatory work requirement under the 1996 comprehensive welfare reform law, which required able-bodied adults to work, prepare for work, or look for work in order to receive benefits under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program.
4. Ignoring a statutory deadline and refusing to consider an application related to nuclear waste storage at Yucca Mountain, which activists sought to block for years.
5. Circumventing the Senate’s duty to provide advice and consent on appointments and instead making “recess” appointments in violation of Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution when the Senate was actually in session.
6. Deciding not to defend the constitutionality of the federal definition of marriage in court.
7. Implementing Common Core national standards through strings-attached waivers from the No Child Left Behind Act.
8. Intimidating Florida to stop its voter roll cleanup, which included removing ineligible voters such as noncitizens, before the 2012 election.
9. Imposing the DREAM Act by executive fiat under the guise of “prosecutorial discretion.”
10. Refusing to enforce federal drug laws in states that have legalized marijuana.

Heritage's entire report is an excellent read - and these are ten of the most egregious actions of the Obama Administration.

Via: Townhall

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‘The Emancipation Proclamation was an executive action’: Rahm Emanuel backs Obama’s executive overreach ‘one thousand percent’

Democratic Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel went to bat for his former boss Monday, claiming he supports President Obama’s strategy of bypassing Congress “one thousand percent” and comparing Obama’s executive orders on healthcare to the Emancipation Proclamation.

Emanuel — the former White House chief of staff in Washington DC on Monday to receive federal money for a new “manufacturing hub” in Chicago — spoke with CNN’s Jim Acosta. The reporter asked if he thought Obama’s plan to use executive actions to ignore an unwilling Congress is the right approach.

“One thousand percent,” he declared. “He can’t allow America’s future to be held hostage by a Congress that won’t do anything.”

And what about worries over an imperial presidency? “So? Well, I dunno,” he began. “These are not equal, but the Emancipation Proclamation was an executive action. Integrating the armed forces was an executive action.”

“There are times which, if Congress would step up, the president would work with them,” he added. “But he has a responsibility not to let the future slip from our hands.”

Emanuel also waved away concerns about a looming Democratic defeat in midterm elections this November. “The one thing I know about politics,” he claimed, “is that anybody who tells you they know what’s gonna happen ten months from now doesn’t know what they’re talking about.”

And he provided valuable insight into how a stateside Democratic politician views Washington DC. “I like coming here when I can take money back home,” he said, laughing. “And this is one of those opportunities.”

Via: Daily Caller

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Obama Weekly Address Highlights Executive Action He Has Started Taking: ‘I’ve Got a Pen and a Phone’

President Barack Obama highlighted in his weekly  address Saturday some of the executive actions he has taken this year, warning Congress once again that he will not stand by and wait for them to act on a host of issues.

“I want to work with Congress on this agenda where I can,” Obama said. “But in this year of action, whenever I can take steps without legislation to expand opportunity for more American families, I will.”

“I’ve got a pen and a phone…”

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“I’ve got a pen and a phone – a pen to take executive action, and a phone to rally citizens and business leaders who are eager to create new jobs and new opportunities,” he continued. “And we’ve already begun.”

Among a series of moves, Obama noted that he has ordered “across-the-board reform of our training programs” and directed the U.S. Department of Treasury to create “my-RA.”

“So when you hear me talk about using my pen and my phone to make a difference for middle class Americans and those working to get into the middle class, that’s what I mean,” he said. “And I’m going to keep asking students and parents and business leaders to help – because there are millions of Americans outside Washington who are tired of stale political arguments, ready to move this country forward, and determined to restore the founding vision of opportunity for all.”

Via: The Blaze

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Democratic Sheila Jackson Lee: ‘Let’s write up these executive orders’

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a member of the new “Full Employment Caucus” formed on Capitol Hill, described the group’s top priority this way: To get President Obama as many tailored-made executive orders for speedy signing as possible.

She said at a recent press conference reported by The Daily Mail that the caucus members will work hard to “give President Obama a number of executive orders that he can sign with pride and strength. In fact, I think that should be our number one agenda. Let’s write up these executive orders – draft them, of course – and ask the president to stand with us on full employment.”

Mr. Obama, meanwhile, has taken to executive orders to push through his policies and agendas, famously claiming in widely published reports that “I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a phone. And I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive actions and administrative actions that move the ball forward,” during Jan. 14 remarks.

The other members of the new caucus: Reps. John Conyers, Maxine Waters, Charles Rangel, Frederica Wilson, Barbara Lee, Jose Serrano and Mike Quigley.

It’s not clear that the caucus’ number one goal will succeed.

House Speaker John Boehner issued scathing criticisms about Mr. Obama’s push for executive powers during a recent Capitol Hill press conference. The Daily Mail reported Mr. Boehner said: “We’re going to watch very closely because there’s a Constitution that we all take an oath to, including [Obama], and following that Constitution is the basis for our republic and we shouldn’t put that in jeopardy.”

Via: Washington Times

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Ted Cruz: The Imperial Presidency of Barack Obama

Of all the troubling aspects of the Obama presidency, none is more dangerous than the president's persistent pattern of lawlessness, his willingness to disregard the written law and instead enforce his own policies via executive fiat. On Monday, Mr. Obama acted unilaterally to raise the minimum wage paid by federal contracts, the first of many executive actions the White House promised would be a theme of his State of the Union address Tuesday night.

The president's taste for unilateral action to circumvent Congress should concern every citizen, regardless of party or ideology. The great 18th-century political philosopher Montesquieu observed: "There can be no liberty where the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or body of magistrates." America's Founding Fathers took this warning to heart, and we should too.

Rule of law doesn't simply mean that society has laws; dictatorships are often characterized by an abundance of laws. Rather, rule of law means that we are a nation ruled by laws, not men. That no one—and especially not the president—is above the law. For that reason, the U.S. Constitution imposes on every president the express duty to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed."

Yet rather than honor this duty, President Obama has openly defied it by repeatedly suspending, delaying and waiving portions of the laws he is charged to enforce. When Mr. Obama disagreed with federal immigration laws, he instructed the Justice Department to cease enforcing the laws. He did the same thing with federal welfare law, drug laws and the federal Defense of Marriage Act.

On many of those policy issues, reasonable minds can disagree. Mr. Obama may be right that some of those laws should be changed. But the typical way to voice that policy disagreement, for the preceding 43 presidents, has been to work with Congress to change the law. If the president cannot persuade Congress, then the next step is to take the case to the American people. As President Reagan put it: "If you can't make them see the light, make them feel the heat" of electoral accountability.

President Obama has a different approach. As he said recently, describing his executive powers: "I've got a pen, and I've got a phone." Under the Constitution, that is not the way federal law is supposed to work.

Via: WSJ

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Obama’s Executive Order on Climate

Obama is gearing up “climate change” as an issue to divert our attention from the many scandals and failures of his administration

On the surface, it might seem to make sense for the President to want to “do something” about climate events such as hurricanes, but there have always been hurricanes and blaming them and everything from droughts to wildfires on “climate change” is not just absurd, it is a deliberate lie that blames a rise in the amount of carbon dioxide, a so-called but incorrectly named “greenhouse gas”, as the cause of these natural events.

The President has issued an Executive Order to ramp up efforts to address “climate change.”

At the heart of the global warming hoax has been this carbon dioxide lie, but there has been no warming for over 17 years and the many computer models that predicted it were wrong; many were deliberately false.

When one looks at the actual facts about climate related events, we find that in recent years there have been fewer tornados with a decline of severe tornadoes over the past forty years. There has been more than eight years without a major hurricane strike in the U.S. and the nation has had the fewest number of forest fires for the past three decades.

President Obama has made it known that one of his goals—other than the destruction of the U.S. economy—has been to reduce “greenhouse gas” emissions by 17% by 2020. His Environmental Protection Agency has been feverishly producing regulations that reflect his “war on coal”, imposing rules on coal-fired plants that have already forced many to close. All this is based on a lie. Even the Supreme Court has taken notice and will hear a case that challenges the EPA. (It previously ruled carbon dioxide was a “pollutant”, a baseless error.)

Via: Canada Free Press

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Holder Begs Court To Prevent Public From Seeing Obama’s “Executive Privilege” Records Relating to “Fast And Furious”

Attorney General Eric Holder and his Department of Justice have asked a federal court to indefinitely delay a lawsuit brought by watchdog group Judicial Watch. The lawsuit seeks the enforcement of open records requests relating to Operation Fast and Furious, as required by law.

Judicial Watch had filed, on June 22, 2012, a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking all documents relating to Operation Fast and Furious and “specifically [a]ll records subject to the claim of executive privilege invoked by President Barack Obama on or about June 20, 2012.”

The administration has refused to comply with Judicial Watch’s FOIA request, and in mid-September the group filed a lawsuit challenging Holder’s denial. That lawsuit remains ongoing but within the past week President Barack Obama’s administration filed what’s called a “motion to stay” the suit. Such a motion is something that if granted would delay the lawsuit indefinitely.

Via: Breitbart

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Obama Executive Order Triples Number Of Agencies Required To Track Guns…

President Obama is tripling the number of Cabinet agencies with gun control law enforcement responsibilities in his new bid to track guns, adding six agencies to the three typically included--Justice, Homeland Security and Defense.

Section 1.e of his executive order released Wednesday adds State, Treasury, Interior, Agriculture, Energy, and Veterans Affairs. It reads: "For purposes of this memorandum, 'Federal law enforcement agencies' means the Departments of State, the Treasury, Defense, Justice, the Interior, Agriculture, Energy, Veterans Affairs, and Homeland Security, and such other agencies and offices that regularly recover firearms in the course of their criminal investigations as the President may designate."

Most federal agencies have a police or security arm, but typically law enforcement doesn't included those other six agencies. Justice, in fact, defines law enforcement this way on its web page:

"A federal law enforcement agency is an organizational unit, or subunit, of the federal government with the principle functions of prevention, detection, and investigation of crime and the apprehension of alleged offenders. Examples of federal law enforcement agencies include the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Secret Service, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF). BJS has surveyed federal law enforcement agencies seven times since 1993. The 2008 Census of Federal Law Enforcement Officers (FLEO) included agencies that employed full-time officers with federal arrest authority who were also authorized (but not necessarily required) to carry firearms while on duty. The officer counts exclude officers in the U.S. Armed Forces (Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the Transportation Security Administration's Federal Air Marshals. Findings are based on the 2008 Census of Federal Law Enforcement Officers."

Via: The Examiner

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