Obama Administration Weakening US Immigration Laws – Report

The Federation of American Immigration Reforms (FAIR) claims that the President Obama’s administration has been aiming on dismantling the United States Immigration laws through unilateral initiatives by purposely ignoring the adverse impacts of his Administration’s policies on the immigration system of United States.

FAIR, an anti illegal immigration group, has used many public statements and policy decisions of the Obama administration since 2009 to substantiate its claims. The group alleges that the administration’s aim behind these policy changes was “to render the enforcement of U.S immigration laws ineffective.”

The main focus of the study was the administration’s decision to provide a pathway towards legal status to those illegal immigrants who arrived in the US as children, which it announced in June this year.

The group claims that the President’s executive order was the climax of all the efforts the administration has been making to disturb the country’s immigration rules enforcement. The actions that complemented this announcement were, as the study said, the lawsuit filed in the US Supreme Court against the Arizona state’s immigration law and the unilateral decision of the administration to shut down nine Border Patrol stations in the US.

These sorts of accusations did not come out of the blue for the government. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) denied all these claims stated in the study. The DHS officials said that the government is just aiming at maximum utilization of scarce means by prioritizing the immigration cases and classifying them in their relevant order.

The officials said that the department is trying to boost up the process of deporting the illegal immigrants convicted of serious felonies and crimes by separately handling their cases from the other illegal immigrants. He claimed that such programs, like the deferred deportation program, complement the targets of the department as it can easily classify and prioritize its actions and avoid unnecessary wastage of resources.

The spokesman for DHS, Mathew Chandler, said that the claims of the study were biased. He said the Immigration and Customs Enforcement had arrested and deported about 396,000 illegal immigrants in the year 2011. Chandler said that most of them were convicted of serious crimes or repeated immigration law violations. He said that, as opposed to the claims by the study, these figures are an increase in apprehensions and deportations from previous figures.

“Over the past three years, this administration has undertaken an unprecedented effort to transform the immigration enforcement system into one that focuses on public safety, border security and the integrity of the immigration system.  As the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) continues to focus its enforcement resources on the removal of individuals who pose a national security or public safety risk, including immigrants convicted of crimes, violent criminals, felons, and repeat immigration law offenders, we have taken a number of steps to transform our immigration enforcement system,” Chandler said.

In response to the accusations of shutting down Border Patrol stations, Chandler said that the department only closed those US-Mexico Border stations that were far from the border line in order to concentrate resources on those Stations that are close to it.

Tags: Arizona state’s immigration law, Barack Obama, Department of Homeland Security, Federation of American Immigration Reforms, Illegal immigrants, Immigration, Mathew Chandler, United States, US Immigration, US Supreme Court