by CHQ Staff
House Democrats are teeing up their next major pieces of legislation: immigration bills that would allow millions of otherwise ineligible aliens to apply for legal status and put them on a path to US citizenship.
The DREAM Act of 2019 (H.R. 2820) grants amnesty, including a path to citizenship, to an undefined population estimated in the millions by amnesty advocates. According to an analysis by our friends at NumbersUSA the bill excludes any enforcement or improvements to immigration law to prevent future illegal immigration or mitigate the current border surge. The bill also fails to prevent the illegal alien parents responsible for the illegal entry of minors from receiving derivative legal status or citizenship.
NumbersUSA also says the bill provides amnesty (conditional permanent residence, or CPR) for illegal aliens who were part of the 2014 unaccompanied alien children (UAC) crisis, and it places no age cap on applicants for the amnesty so every illegal alien who has been here since 2015 can apply.
Further, H.R. 2820 waives, automatically, certain grounds of inadmissibility, including public charge, visa or admission fraud, and false claims to US citizenship. And the bill allows DHS to waive of other grounds of inadmissibility, including for aliens with communicable diseases or a lack of vaccinations, drug abusers or addicts, aliens with health issues that pose a threat to public safety, human smugglers, student visa abusers, aliens previously removed, aliens who illegally reentered after removal, and unlawful voters
Among the bill’s worst provisions are its lenient treatment of convicted criminals and gang members: The bill prohibits the use of State or Federal gang databases to establish gang membership and grants amnesty to aliens with several misdemeanors if they occurred on the same date or arose out of the same act, omission, or scheme. It allows for the virtually unrestricted waiver of crimes of moral turpitude, controlled substance violations, and prostitution, which would otherwise render an alien inadmissible. And it authorizes the waiver of one misdemeanor if the alien has not been convicted of any offense in the previous 5 years, or two misdemeanors if the alien has not been convicted of any offense in the previous 10 years.
Perhaps most egregiously and obnoxiously, H.R. 2820 establishes a taxpayer-funded grant program for nonprofits to assist illegal aliens in acquiring amnesty.
Equally bad is the Democrats’ American Promise Act of 2019 (H.R. 2821), a bill which proves Ronald Reagan’s famous dictum that there’s no such thing as a temporary government program.
H.R. 2821 grants legal permanent resident (LPR) status to roughly 435,000 people who obtained legal status under the ironically named Temporary Protected Status (TPS) or Deferred Enforced Departure (DED) programs, as well as those who do not have lawful status but were otherwise eligible, regardless of whether or not there is a reason for continued designation under the law, and without making any substantive reforms to the program to ensure that it is actually temporary in the future.
The bill grants amnesty to illegal aliens who had received TPS or DED and to any alien who could have applied for TPS or DED but didn’t.
It is worth noting say our friends at NumbersUSA that a large majority of those who currently have TPS and DED were illegally present in the United States when their country was designated for TPS.
Like its companion bill reviewed above, H.R. 2821 waives, automatically, certain grounds of inadmissibility, including public charge, prior illegal presence, failure to attend removal proceedings, visa or admission fraud, false claims to US citizenship, and previous removal.
It also allows DHS to waive of other grounds of inadmissibility, including for aliens with communicable diseases or a lack of vaccinations, drug abusers or addicts, aliens with health issues that pose a threat to public safety, aliens convicted of crimes of moral turpitude, controlled substance traffickers, aliens engaged in prostitution, stowaways, human smugglers, aliens subject to a civil penalty, student visa abusers, and unlawful voters.
H.R. 2821 also places an enforcement freeze on any alien “who appears to be prima facie eligible for relief,” until they have received a final decision establishing eligibility. Our friends at NumbersUSA remind us that under a similar provision in Obama’s original DACA, ICE could not place any alien who claimed to be eligible in removal proceedings, including those in jail with criminal charges.
Like H.R. 2820, H.R. 2821 also establishes a taxpayer-funded grant program for nonprofits to assist illegal aliens in acquiring LPR status under the bill if it becomes law.
Setting aside the larger argument about amnesty (which we oppose in any form) what is noteworthy about these two Democrat proposals is who they amnesty – drug dealers, gang members, aliens with communicable diseases or a lack of vaccinations, drug abusers or addicts, aliens with health issues that pose a threat to public safety, aliens convicted of crimes of moral turpitude, controlled substance traffickers, aliens engaged in prostitution, stowaways, human smugglers, aliens subject to a civil penalty, student visa abusers, and unlawful voters.
In other words – all the aliens that no rational government that was formed to protect its citizens would want to admit to its sovereign territory. But in today’s Democratic Party we are not dealing with a group that wants to govern according to the rational principles of protecting its citizens and looking out for their welfare. Instead, we are faced with a political party intent on fundamentally changing the demographic make up of the country in hopes that such a change will grant them permanent political power.
We urge CHQ readers and friends to call their Representative (the toll-free Capitol Switchboard is 1-866-220-0044), tell your Representative you oppose amnesty for illegal aliens, and demand that they vote NO on H.R. 2820 and H.R. 2821, the Democrats’ latest proposal to grant amnesty to drug addicts, gang members, prostitutes, human smugglers, public charges and other aliens no rational government would admit to our country.
