Some interesting items in the Friday news dump from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services: Certain illegal aliens from Honduras and Nicaragua are having their amnesty extended, and USCIS is establishing the “Haitian Family Reunification Parole Program.”
The common element in these three developments is falsification of language. It’s not quite as bald as “war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength,” but Minitrue could take a few pointers from the open-borders crowd.
The first items announce yet another extension of Temporary Protected Status for Hondurans and Nicaraguans who were here illegally (or, in a handful of cases, on a temporary visa) when Hurricane Mitch hit their home countries in October 1998. The status (which has also been granted to illegals from Somalia, Haiti, El Salvador, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, and, under a different name, Liberia) is intended to provide for a pause in deportations after a natural disaster or civil conflict. It provides the illegal aliens with work authorization, a Social Security number, a driver’s license, and all the other trappings of legal residence, and is usually granted for 18 months at a time.
TPS is provided for in statute (in other words, it’s not simply another example of Obama’s lawlessness), but its fundamental dishonesty is clear in its application. Honduran and Nicaraguan illegals (a total of about 90,000 people) were granted the amnesty in early 1999, a few months after the hurricane, and have had it renewed like clockwork ever since. I haven’t gone back to count, but this Honduran newspaper report says it’s the twelfth such extension (actually, I think it’s the twelfth time the Honduran government has requested TPS for its illegals here, which would make it the eleventh extension). In any case, you see the problem — this “temporary” status has now persisted for 15 years. Maybe in geologic time 15 years can be termed “temporary,” but in human terms it’s permanent.
In fact, no one with Temporary Protected Status — not a single person — has ever been made to go home because his “temporary” status expired. Several thousand Liberians were granted TPS because of the civil war there — in 1991. They’re still here.
The Haitian announcement is another example of immigration dissimulation. There are numerical limits to the various legal immigration categories — the category for adult sibling of U.S. citizens, for instance, is capped at 65,000 green cards a year. I think those numbers are too high, but they reflect Congress’s intention that the number of people coming here not exceed certain levels.
This leads to lines, with people waiting, sometimes for years, because there’s a de facto infinite demand for immigration to the U.S. The administration wanted Congress to double legal immigration, in part to address this issue (as well as to deliver the cheap labor corporate lobbyists were demanding). But since Congress didn’t agree, the White House is going to simply let in Haitians whose relatives here have filed immigration petitions for them, numerical limits be damned. This is the creepy concept of a “pierceable cap” so beloved of immigration expansionists. In this case, the executive has statutory authority to do this (under what is called “parole”) but “only on a case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit,” in the words of the statute. Shortening the wait time of foreigners who want to move here doesn’t qualify as an urgent humanitarian reason, nor will it yield a significant public benefit — but if mere words interfere with the administration’s goal of increasing immigration, then the words will be redefined.
How about this for a backup motto for Minitrue: “Temporary Is Permanent, Caps Are Pierceable.”