06/19/2012
This is an excerpt from the official memo from Janet Napolitano on Obama’s unconstitutional Administrative Amnesty. You can read the whole thing as a PDF on the DHS site. Link via Stanford Law School Fellow William Baude, who describes it as "short on legal specifics". Without meaning to put words in Baude’s mouth, the "legal specifics" I would look for would be "where do Napolitano and Obama get the authority for this?" It’s not in the Constitution!
SUBJECT: Exercising Prosecutorial Discretion with Respect to Individuals Who Came to the United States as Children
By this memorandum, I am setting forth how, in the exercise of our prosecutorial discretion, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) should enforce the Nation’s immigration laws against certain young people who were brought to this country as children and know only this country as home. As a general matter, these individuals lacked the intent to violate the law and our ongoing review of pending removal cases is already offering administrative closure to many of them. However, additional measures are necessary to ensure that our enforcement resources are not expended on these low priority cases but are instead appropriately focused on people who meet our enforcement priorities.
The following criteria should be satisfied before an individual is considered for an exercise of prosecutorial discretion pursuant to this memorandum:
- came to the United States under the age of sixteen;
- has continuously resided in the United States for a least five years preceding the date of this memorandum and is present in the United States on the date of this memorandum;
- is currently in school, has graduated from high school, has obtained a general education development certificate, or is an honorably discharged veteran of the Coast Guard or Armed Forces of the United States;
- has not been convicted of a felony offense, a significant misdemeanor offense, multiple misdemeanor offenses, or otherwise poses a threat to national security or public safety; and
- is not above the age of thirty.[More (PDF)]
Important to remember about all this stuff is that it’s a pack of lies.
Mickey Kaus writes (all links and emphasis his)
The maddening details of Obama’s DREAM Decree are becoming clearer. As this CIS report notes, 1) The decree doesn’t just apply to illegal immigrants who were “brought to this country by their parents.” It also would give work permits to those who snuck across the border by themselves as teenagers. “Through no fault of their own” is a talking point for DREAM proselytizers, not an actual legal requirement. 2) The same goes for the phrase “and know only this country as home.” That’s a highly imaginative riff on the decree’s actual requirement, which is for 5 years “continuous residence.” It turns out “continuous residence” doesn’t mean what you think it means. “Immigration attorneys have been successful in getting immigration courts to whittle this down to a point where it is almost meaningless,” says CIS’s Jon Feere. As an illegal immigrant you can go back
homeabroad for multiple 6-month stints during those five years–but, if precedent holds, in Janet Napolitano’s eyes you will still “know only this country as home.” [The maddening details of the DREAM Decree _ The Daily Caller, June 19, 2012]
You frequently hear that something has loopholes you could drive a truck through.
This thing reminds that a Republican candidate, attempting to show how porous the border was, led three elephants and a mariachi band across it.[Running of the Elephants | Republican uses animals, mariachi band to critique border security, By Sara Inés Calderón, The Brownsville Herald, October 11, 2006]
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.