Congress Approves Private Bill To Help Illegal Immigrant

A rare private bill recently approved by the United States Congress will allow an illegal immigrant living in southern California to remain in the country and become a permanent resident.

The secret law on behalf of one individual appears to be a growing trend among some pro-amnesty Democrats who are quietly blocking the deportations of illegal aliens and sponsoring clandestine legislation to keep the violators in the country indefinitely. Just a few weeks ago three federal lawmakers from California and Ohio blocked the removal of a Guatemalan arrested for driving without a license and a Peruvian who benefits from taxpayer-financed discounted tuition at a public college.

A few days ago Congress passed a law to let a San Diego-area man (Shigeru Yamada) who emigrated from Japan at the age of 10 to stay in the U.S. Congressional approval of bills that benefit just one person is highly unusual and hasn’t occurred in years. Usually reserved for extreme situations with strong public backing, the special measures must be sponsored by a member of the U.S. House or a U.S. Senator and community support usually plays a role in the process.

Yamada’s law was co-sponsored by Senator Dianne Feinstein, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and San Diego Congressman Bob Filner, who is also sponsoring eight other individual laws related to immigration. Feinstein, who lost a powerful committee chairmanship amid a corruption scandal, leads the Senate in using private bills to keep illegal immigrants in her northern California home town from being deported.

A former San Francisco mayor who was elected to the Senate in 1992, Feinstein introduced 40% of last year’s private measures, according to a news report that highlights several of the illegal aliens that she helped evade deportation. Among them is a Philippine woman ordered to leave the U.S. after two decades, a deported family of Egyptians that overstayed a tourist visa by more than 10 years, a Mexican family that has lived in her district for two decades and an Asian couple that entered the country more than 25 years ago as tourists and never left.

Recently, Feinstein used her political power to halt the removal of an illegal alien from Peru who attended San Francisco Community College before getting arrested by immigration authorities. The veteran lawmaker has introduced legislation to permanently shield the 20-year-old man, Steve Li, from deportation and managed to delay his removal with a separate bill.

Feinstein promoted her pro-amnesty, open-border agenda on the Senate floor over the weekend while pushing legislation (DREAM Act) to give illegal aliens who graduate from an American high school and enter college or the military a pathway to citizenship. The measure, which passed the House, failed 55-41 in the Senate. In an attempt to get her colleagues’ support, Feinstein said that the illegal immigrants who would benefit from the DRAM Act are “just like every other American…”