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Loophole in Gang of 8 bill gives Napolitano wide discretion to allow almost anyone to stay in U.S.

Loophole in Gang of 8 bill gives Napolitano wide discretion to allow almost anyone to stay in U.S.

One of the things I learned from Obamacare was that each section of the law could take many hours to understand because of cross-references to other sections and other laws.  Amendments make the problem even greater.

Put that problem into a 1000+ page  bill, and it is almost impossible to uncover all the mischief — intentional and unintentional — buried in the language, something we are learning after the fact with Obamacare.

The rush to pass the Gang of 8 1000+ page bill is another example.  As if that weren’t bad enough to start, Sen. Bob Corker last night unveiled his 1190-page amendment, and Harry Reid is rushing the first test vote to Monday.  We have seen this movie before.

There is one provision which has not received a lot of press.

Yesterday Dana Loesch had a series of tweets about a section of the original Gang of 8 bill giving the Secretary of Homeland Security almost complete discretion to waive all other provisions of the law as to removal, deportation and inadmissibility.

It took me many hours to run that down and confirm.  And I have done so.

This is extremely dense material.  I’ve extracted and uploaded sections 3214 and 3215 from the May 28 version of the bill (the most recent listed on the Thomas website) along with the Corker amendment (3214 and 3215) as to these sections (which did not change anything relevant to this discussion) so you can read them yourself.  The text references 8 U.S.C. 1182.

Here is the key provision, as part of section 3214(b) dealing with family unification.  The section gives the Secretary discretion to waive the provisions as to removal, deportation and inadmissibility of illegal aliens not just for family “hardship” (which itself is huge) but for any reason the Secretary deems in the “public interest.”

I have highlighted and marked the key portion of the section to point out key wording:

Gang of 8 Immigration Bill Section 3214 Discretion of Secretary Title

Gang of 8 Immigration Bill Section 3214(b) Discretion of Secretary marked

The section goes on to take discretion away from the Secretary for aliens who have committed certain specified crimes, but otherwise the Secretary can do pretty much whatever she wants in terms of waiving removal or deportation of a person attempting to enter the country or in the country illegally based on her determination of the “public interest.”

There are similar provisions in section 3215 as to admissibility into the United States.

The section not only guarantees that a single family member being lawfully in the country will allow the full immediate family to stay, but it also will provide the Secretary — Janet Napolitano now — with broad discretion to allow anyone to stay for almost any reason.

I’m not sure if somewhere in our current immigration laws the Secretary has such discretion.  Regardless, the Gang of 8 bill and the Corker amendment are supposed to provide public guarantees that the laws will be enforced as written, but in fact there is a loophole large enough to drive a political agenda through.

There is every reason to expect this discretion to be abused to widen amnesty.

We have seen how the Obama administration unlawfully refused to enforce the immigration laws as to removal proceedings, as a federal judge found.

Now they want you to trust that they will not waive enforcement of other provisions in the name of what they deem to be the public interest.

The rush to a vote in the Senate does not allow time to fully understand all the provisions.  And that’s why the rush is taking place.

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Comments

It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.

    Why do you think Schumer is smirking all the time?

    The Dems are waiting like grifters playing Republican Establishment marks and hoping the conservative base does not make them wake up in time.

    Rick in reply to myiq2xu. | June 22, 2013 at 11:43 am

    No honest politician would vote for such a lengthy bill. In addition to the obviousness of the fact that such physically huge pieces of legislation cannot be analyzed with any accuracy, the Obamacare fiasco is an immediate and irrefutable example of that. Yet these people go forward with another monstrosity. This bill, and those who vote for it or anything like it, are revolting.

      Ragspierre in reply to Rick. | June 22, 2013 at 12:31 pm

      “No honest politician…”

      Bless your innocence, but that one had me LOTFL. (And I never say LOTFL…!!!)

Part of the push for this piece of crap is that Illegals will have to go to the back of the line. Well guess what, thats already being proven false. States like New Jersey are giving Illegals in state tuition fees at colleges while a citizen from lets say Pennsylvania pays an out of state fee. Is this what we call going to the back of the line if a citizen of this country doesn’t even get the same benefits of an illegal? Millions of Illegals are already receiving food stamps and other forms of welfare. As part of the bill its claimed that no illegals can receive any welfare benefits. Do you really think the government is going to say to those millions of illegals that they have to get off food stamps and welfare in order to comply with the bill? lol we all know better. And wages for lower class citizens will be going down once Illegals are available to take your jobs. Illegals wages will actually be going up. Nice isn’t it? Were all getting screwed except the Illegals.

    Observer in reply to foxmuldar. | June 22, 2013 at 12:04 pm

    The amnesty bill also makes it much cheaper for U.S. employers to hire amnestied illegal aliens instead of U.S. citizens.

    This is because the amnesty bill exempts amnestied illegal aliens from Obamacare for at least 10 years. (They had to do this, because making millions of amnestied illegals eligible for all those $20,000 a year Obamacare subsidies would have been hugely expensive, and would have blown up the myth that the amnesty bill won’t cost U.S. taxpayers).

    So if an employer in the future is deciding between hiring a full-time American job applicant vs. a full-time amnestied illegal alien job applicant, the employer has to consider the fact that hiring the amnestied illegal will cost the employer much less (at least $3,000 per year — that’s the Obamacare fine — for 10 years, or $30,000 total) than hiring the U.S. citizen job applicant.

    If an employer can save himself $30,000 in Obamacare fines by hiring an amnestied illegal alien worker instead of a similarly-qualified American worker, who do you think the employer will hire?

    Observer in reply to foxmuldar. | June 22, 2013 at 12:17 pm

    The “back of the line” argument was always a load of bull.

    The “line” for a foreigner who wants to live legally in the U.S. is back in his/her home country. That is where would-be immigrants wait for their visas. They don’t get to come to the U.S. and live and work here while they wait for legal status.

    Another blatant lie is the crap about how the government is going to do “background checks” on the millions of illegal aliens who apply for amnesty. Rubio is STILL peddling this nonsense: “we have to know who these people are, and bring them out of the shadows.”

    Last year, we heard the same BS from Obama before he signed his DREAM Act by executive order amnesty. Last week, we learned just how diligent DHS has been with the “background checks” for the DREAM Act amnesty applicants. Judicial Watch served an FOIA request on DHS, to find out how the “background checks” are being done. DHS admitted that it doesn’t have the personnel or the money to conduct actual “background checks” on the hundreds of thousands of DREAM Act amnesty applications it has received — so DHS decided not to even bother! They’re just stamping the amnesty applications “APPROVED” — and they’re not even requiring verifiable ID from the amnesty applicants!

    DHS can’t perform background checks on hundreds of thousands of DREAM Act amnesty applicants, but we should have no doubt that DHS will be able to perform background checks on millions, or even tens of millions of “gang of 8” amnesty applicants!

The principal problem with the Immigration bill is that it is a frontal attack on African-Americans. It is the most anti-black legislation since the slave laws of the colonial South.

This bill imports poor Mexicans to compete with and replace poor blacks. In case you think this is not true, you should look at Southern California, where the replacement is will under way. Blacks have been displaced from traditional jobs; e.g., LA janitors once nearly all black are today nearly all Mexican. Also, there is widespread ethnic cleansing going on in which blacks are being forcibly displaced from historic black neighborhoods. The cleansing is so far advanced in LA that its black population is declining.

Why our Ruling Class prefers a Mexican underclass to a black underclass in a mystery. Are Mexicans more malleable? Are they cheaper? Are they more productive? I can understand Republicans supporting this replacement, but blacks are a major constituency of the Democrat Party. What’s in it for the Democrats?

And why do black leaders like Marilyn Waters go along with this replacement? After all, it is her own constituents that have suffered the most under Mexican immigration, legal and illegal.

This is historic. African-Americans no longer have anyone to represent their interests. Can the Democrat Party survive after this betrayal? Do Democrats care?

    Rick in reply to bob sykes. | June 22, 2013 at 11:49 am

    The democrats are satisfied with blacks being part of the voting-democratic underclass, supported by transfer payments and government fraud. The growing voting-democratic hispanic underclass is additive for the democrats.

    Conservative Beaner in reply to bob sykes. | June 22, 2013 at 11:54 am

    The Democrats know Blacks will vote D because their leaders will continue to blast the GOP and keep lying that the Dems are looking out for them.

    Do the Dems care, hell no.

I believe that Laura Ingram said she’d read the whole steaming pile (800 pages) and said there were multiple loopholes you could drive a truck through.

Laura is a seriously smart cookie, and a pretty good lawyer.

I seem to recall, “In order to find out what is in the bill you must first pass it,” from the past.

This whole immigration farce needs to be neutralized simply by enforcing current statutes without exception.

Is anyone in DC still capable of rationalizing the obvious? If I can but they cannot, something has gone terribly wrong…

Discretionary power is just euphemism for Monarchical power.

I’m not shocked that this is another “Screw You America” bill. So much for Marco being a good candidate for President. He’s just another worthless RINO.

There is no emergency, no reason at all a massive bill needs to be rushed through like this – UNLESS, as in the case of ObamaCare, they cannot afford for the public to “find out what’s in it.”

Most of the Republicans who will vote for this monstrosity have been off my list for some time already, but some more seem eager to join them.

They will be dead to me, too! :-p

[…] Jacobson at Legal Insurrection has up a great post today on “Loophole in Gang of 8 bill gives Napolitano wide discretion to allow almost anyone to […]

Henry Hawkins | June 22, 2013 at 5:25 pm

Not that this F**k You, America bill needs additional points of WHAT?!? pointed out, but did you/we know that they won’t even begin to hire the new Border Agents until 2017, and they have until 2021 to complete the ‘surge’? (If they ever get hired, of course).

It also guarantees amnesty for future illegal aliens who overstay visas, and includes language that restricts future enforcement against any illegal immigrant.

Fees on legal immigrants are increased, while fees for illegals are reduced or waived, which is the same as saying they’ll all be waived. American taxpayers will kick in $38 billion, which, in DC cost estimate antics, likely comes out to over $100 billion.

———————

This bill is so horribly bad for America and any Republican who votes for it, I cannot help but suspect there is some gigantic unknown behind all this, something that makes it worth it for a Rubio to toss his career away before it’s barely underway.

    Henry Hawkins in reply to Henry Hawkins. | June 22, 2013 at 5:30 pm

    Plus we have the wonderful fact that, (1) any Democrat administration, current or future, will simply ignore laws it doesn’t like, and (2) that the GOP, current or future, will roll over and allow that to happen.

    Just as the Obama administration, once in the WH, quickly came to love the executive powers established by the Bush administration, so too will future GOP administrations fall in love with Obama administration-established powers once they get back in the door.

    I believe I’ll go sharpen and shine up my pitchforks.

[…]   Dunne explains some of the specific problems with this bloated bill ~   • little or no mention of deportation – even for criminals (HSA is given sweeping latitude); […]

BannedbytheGuardian | June 22, 2013 at 11:48 pm

I think you need those billboards of Politburo members that were posted in various parks across the USSR.They each had their own stilts so they could be moved up or down the line or expunged & replaced.

The only difference would be that these are Czars in the US . .This is so twisted because Russians know there is only ONE Czar . You have The All Czars!

[…] to be misleading, and much like Obamacare places an enormous amount of decision making powers into the hands of un-elected regulators. People, not equal treatment under the law, will be the decider behind whom gets favorable […]

[…] William A. Jacobson builds on Loesch’s revelations: […]

Karen Sacandy | June 23, 2013 at 10:56 am

Professor, thanks for doing the research. I started reading the substitute bill and quit around page 50. However, I got far enough to read additional border agents not required until 2017.

The list as to why this bill is unacceptable could run into a hundred items, any one of which is important enough to torpedo it.

Sessions and Cruz are right. If the House GOP conference would replace Boehner now, I could have some confidence the House would save us by NOT bringing any immigration bill to the floor. Boehner is an Achilles Heel for sure.

So, a few items that come to mind:

1. Money to groups such as La Raza to teach American History which will mean immigrants with little education being taught America stole the southwest from Mexico.

2. Money to groups such as La Raza giving them life blood which we should be strangling their funding so they will wither on the vine.

3. Interior enforcement nil.

4. Those overstaying visas, which the CBO stated was a major (40% if I recall correctly) contributor to the illegal alien population, are given amnesty for this and still able to obtain provisional status and ultimately all the benefits.

5. The Earned Income Tax Credit which gives illegal aliens TAX MONEY FOR CHILDREN – which the IRS is well aware is being used for nieces and nephews not in the U.S.A. and fraudulently to the tune of $200 million a year – is permitted to continue in this bill.

6. The ObamaCare exemption for illegal aliens, which as another poster has noted, will give illegal aliens a cost-advantage over Americans to employers.

7. The sheer number of various categories of immigrants permitted. We’ll never be able to assimilate them. Our unemployment rate will continue at high levels.

8. Obama is capable of destroying our country, but lacks any ability to create a better country. He has decided to create a third-world country to – like Norm Mineta – avenge his anger and pain from childhood issues.

I could go on and on and on and on, but they intend to create a bill they can ignore-as they have ignored all others except those which permit accomplishment of their prime goal: consolidation of power, and whether it’s power over a great country or a dying one, they care not.

Professor, given the importance of this issue to the direction of the country, I humbly request you place this topic at the top again, each day, until resolution by Congress.

Thank you.

[…] The rush to a vote in the Senate does not allow time to fully understand all the provisions. And that’s why the rush is taking place.” –William A. Jacobson […]

[…] Loophole in Gang of 8 bill gives Napolitano wide discretion to allow almost anyone to stay in U.S. […]

[…] Loophole in Gang of 8 bill gives Napolitano wide discretion to allow almost anyone to stay in U.S. One of the things I learned from Obamacare was that each section of the law could take many hours to understand because of cross-references to other sections and other laws. Amendments make the problem even greater. […]

[…] Loophole in Gang of 8 bill gives Napolitano wide discretion to allow almost anyone to stay in U.S. […]

[…] ‘great’ news from the Gang Rapers of Eight amnesty bill. According to Legal Insurrection, there is a major loophole in the amnesty bill that will allow DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano to […]

I had a nightmare last night. The DOS and DOJ used an immigration loophole to flood the US with thousands of radical Islamic followers. In the resulting violence and unrest, martial law was declared and all civil liberties suspended. It turned out that illegal immigration from Mexico was simply a diversion and 9/11 really was a false flag operation.

Whew! I’m glad it was only a bad dream.

Hmmmm…. censorship on this blog? My comment about the danger of the immigration bill were deleted within 10 minutes.

Not nice.

[…] such as de facto affirmative action hiring for current illegal immigrants due to Obamacare and huge amounts of discretion for the DHS Secretary to waive deportation and inadmissibility.   And for all the talk, the new Schumer-Corker-Hoeven “deal” is nothing new at all.  It’s […]

[…] such as de facto affirmative action hiring for current illegal immigrants due to Obamacare and huge amounts of discretion for the DHS Secretary to waive deportation and inadmissibility.   And for all the talk, the new Schumer-Corker-Hoeven “deal” is nothing new at all.  It’s […]

[…] such as de facto affirmative action hiring for current illegal immigrants due to Obamacare and huge amounts of discretion for the DHS Secretary to waive deportation and inadmissibility.   And for all the talk, the new Schumer-Corker-Hoeven “deal” is nothing new at all.  It’s […]

[…] Not OK: Loophole in Gang of 8 bill gives Napolitano wide discretion to allow almost anyone to stay in U.S.. […]

[…] features of the bill are seeping into the right-leaning media: (1) The legislation confers wide discretionary powers on the Secretary of Homeland Security; this entails a largely-unchecked ability to grant […]

[…] to determine exactly what the bill says. Sessions cited law professor William A. Jacobson, who undertook the painstaking effort to analyze just two sections of the bill, 3214 and 3215, which reference […]

[…] Loophole in Gang of 8 bill gives Napolitano wide discretion to allow almost anyone to stay in U.S. […]

[…] a problem that is already debilitating to our system of immigration enforcement by investing unlimited discretionary power in the hands of Janet Napolitano, who will have the ability to effectively nullify any application […]