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CRIMINAL: Obama allows 480,000 illegals to remain in U.S. in BLATANT disregard for law
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Congress erupted on Tuesday when the assistant director for national security investigations claimed a shortage of funds and a difficult environment were blamed for over 5 million illegals residing in the United States.
Highlights
CALIFORNIA NETWORK (https://www.youtube.com/c/californianetwork)
6/15/2016 (7 years ago)
Published in U.S.
Keywords: Immigration, illegal, U.S., visas, Congress
LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - According to The Washington Times, Craig Healy, the assistant director for national security investigations at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, admitted the system was failing.
"We utilize our prioritization scheme along with the resources that we have," adding a lack of funding and an environment in which authorities must work with limited information, results in months of tracking to determine whether immigrants are staying beyond the limits of their visas.
A minimum of 480,000 people were reported to have overstayed their visas in 2015, joining the roughly 5 million others who remain in the United States.
When Healy claimed less than 2,000 or 0.04 percent of those illegals were arrested and were not priority targets, members of Congress were shocked.
Congress members called for stronger efforts to control the number of people overstaying their visas and to properly deport those who remain on the backlog.
Rep. Lamar Smith believes the Obama administration is at fold as each year sees significantly smaller numbers of deportations.
In 2009, 12,500 overstays were deported but by 2012 only 6,800 were deported. In 2015, only 2,500 were deported.
Smith stated: "By deporting such a small percentage of the visa overstayers, the message they are sending wide and far is just get into the country, if you're not convicted of a serious crime, you're going to be allowed to stay. You're gonna pass go; you're gonna get the money. That is the wrong message to send because it increases more illegal immigration."
Despite stereotypical assumptions, Homeland Security officials reported Canadians were the largest group of offenders, followed by Mexicans, Brazilians, Germans and Italians.
Many of the 10,000 offenders flagged last year left the country, albeit belatedly, or were granted a new legal status by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Healy explained that someone is flagged then investigators attempt to track them down and determine their legal status.
So why is it so difficult to determine a person's status?
Healy admitted investigators are sometimes unable to track people down or switch to priority targets, leading to a larger backlog list investigators revisit every few months.
He also admitted there are 95,000 backlogged names - and those are the people who have been flagged for expired work visas. How many more illegals are in the United States and are entirely undocumented? Why is the government allowing this to happen?
Calls for immigration reform have been heard but with the presidential election looming, few have bothered to heed those calls.
Would immigration protocol reforms make a difference in the number of immigrants staying well beyond their legal time limits? Perhaps more investigators and information-sharing within the Department of Homeland Security could but whether either will be granted remains to be seen.
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