Obama Offers Hurricane Amnesty

Capitalizing on any opportunity to grant illegal aliens amnesty, the Obama Administration is using the recent hurricane as an excuse to waive immigration laws, including for violators of student visas like the 9/11 hijackers.

While this outrageous storm amnesty has been ignored by the mainstream media, it’s very real and largely unprecedented. In an announcement posted by the Homeland Security agency that handles these matters, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the Obama Administration says it “understands that a natural disaster can affect an individual’s ability to maintain a lawful immigration status.”

Therefore, USCIS reminds “customers” affected by Hurricane Sandy of certain “benefits or relief that may available to them.” Let’s take a look at what those are. Here’s a good one: “Expedited adjudication of off-campus employment authorization applications for F-1 students experiencing economic hardship.”

This would apply to foreign students like the al-Qaeda terrorists who trained as pilots in U.S. flight schools and purposely slammed commercial airplanes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon in 2001. All entered and lived in the U.S. with student visas and remained in the country even after they expired. One of the hijackers had enrolled—but never attended—a northern California language school.

Earlier this year a federal audit blasted the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for failing taking action against only a “small portion” of the estimated 4 to 5.5 million foreigners who overstay their visa like the 9/11 terrorists. Investigators who conducted the probe for Congress found that the specialized DHS unit charged with cracking down on visa violators has “competing priorities” that evidently affect its efficiency in this dire national security matter.

Besides further shielding those egregious visa violators from deportation, Obama’s new Hurricane Sandy amnesty protects others. USCIS is also extending “nonimmigrant status” for individuals, even when the request is filed after the authorization period of admission has expired.” This rewards those who have blown off federal immigration laws.

This preposterous storm amnesty is simply the latest of several moves by the administration to help illegal immigrants who in some cases have violated U.S. law for decades. Back in 2010, Texas’s largest newspaper published an exposé about a then-secret DHS initiative that systematically cancelled pending deportations. The remarkable program stunned the legal profession and baffled immigration attorneys who say the government bounced their clients’ deportation even when expulsion was virtually guaranteed.

In June the president implemented a controversial plan to spare nearly 1 million illegal immigrants under the age of 30 from deportation, granting them a chance to obtain U.S. citizenship. The administration refuses to call it amnesty, instead saying it’s a “deferred action process” that will help “young people brought to the United States through no fault of their own as children.”