It’s
great to be an illegal in the USA! Come one; come all.
One portion of the Senate bill would loosen the rules for seeking
asylum. Sec. 3401 removes the one-year deadline for applying for asylum; Sec.
3504 adds another layer of appeals for aliens turned down; and Sec. 3502 allows the U.S. attorney
general to provide government-funded legal counsel to aliens, something current
law bars.
Sec.
2106 of the immigration bill outsources the job of guiding aliens through
amnesty from the Department of Homeland Security to community organizations.
These organizations will get federal grants to screen aliens for eligibility,
assist them in documenting their residence, tax status, employment, and tax
history, coordinate applications for family members, and apply for waivers
where needed. Outsourcing these functions risks allowing them to be
politicized. Community activists can say and do things government employees
can’t. On a smaller scale, outsourcing has been going on since 2009. One past
recipient is the Northern Manhattan Coalition for Immigrant Rights, which
claims to “build political power through citizenship drives and voter
registration.”
This
outsourcing is reminiscent of how the Obama health law entrusts the important
job of helping people enroll in health insurance to community organizations.
Together, these outsourcing provisions make community activists the “go-to”
people for accessing government help, like a fifth estate with power and government funding but few
rules. (ACORN Lives!)
Sec.
2531 of the immigration bill sets up a nonprofit United States Citizenship
Foundation to “engage in coordinated work” with the federal government. It will
be run by 10 directors drawn from national community organizations, and will
develop “citizenship preparation” programs to teach newcomers about American
history and civics. That job is currently done by the federal Office of
Immigration, which produces high-quality nonpartisan materials and is subject
to public scrutiny. Outsourcing these functions would permit community activists to rewrite America’s past
and principles with a partisan slant. (We must keep ACORN going!)
Sec.
2524 establishes the Task Force on New Americans, which would be comprised of
top executive branch personnel and charged with ensuring that federal programs
“adequately address” the healthcare, education, and job-training needs of new
immigrants and developing legislative proposals. Will the president push for additional
legislation to increase benefits for immigrants?
Many
of the bill’s provisions are labeled “emergency legislation,” to weasel out of
Congress’s statutory Pay-As-You-Go Act of 2010, which says that if Congress
creates mandatory spending in one area, it has to reduce spending somewhere
else or raise taxes. Labeling immigration reform an “emergency” is cooking the books.
Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York and
author of “Beating Obamacare.”
