Central Americans cross into the U.S. in August 2014.
The number of Central American migrants crossing illegally into the United States through the Southern border has grown exponentially under the Obama administration.
More than 130,000 came in 2014 alone, most of them welcomed by sanctuary cities and then protected from deportation by President Obama’s executive actions.
The legality of those actions remains unsettled and appears headed to the Supreme Court.
But now President Obama has invented a new way to continue the influx of migrants from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador and do it in a way that is deemed “legal.” He will simply re-categorize them as “refugees.”
Secretary of State John Kerry announced Wednesday plans to expand a program to let Central Americans apply for refugee status before they attempt the long, arduous trip to the U.S.-Mexico border.
As such, Obama will place authority for the program under the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, who will pre-screen migrants from three Central American countries and decide which ones qualify as refugees eligible to come to the United States, the Associate Press reports.
“I am pleased to announce plans to expand the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program to help vulnerable families and individuals from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, and offer them a safe and legal alternative to the dangerous journey many are currently tempted to begin, making them easy prey for human smugglers who have no interest but their own profits,” Kerry said in a speech at the National Defense University.
Later Wednesday, Obama authorized the State Department to access up to $70 million from the U.S. Emergency Refugee and Migration Assistance Fund “for the purpose of meeting unexpected urgent refugee and migration needs.”
In December 2014, the U.S. began offering refugee status to Central American children who have parents already living legally in the U.S., but only a limited number have been approved.
The latest effort expands that program by moving applicants, both families and single individuals, into “safe zones” to await processing. In other words, the U.N. will be herding refugees into camps in Central America just as it has been doing in the Middle East, Africa and Asia, then permanently resettling them in the United States.
More cheap labor
Stephen Miller, director of communications for Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., chairman of the Senate subcommittee on immigration, said it’s another unilateral move by Obama to provide cheap labor to big corporations. And he’s unlikely to get any pushback from Republicans in Congress.
“This is a backdoor plan to expand low-wage migration into the United States, increasing financial burdens on Americans and reducing their opportunities for employment,” Miller told WND.
Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, told WND the new program amounts to a bait-and-switch by the Obama administration.
“The Obama administration is trying to cover up for the fact that its policies of catch-and-release at the border have caused this huge influx of new illegal immigration by enlisting the U.N. to designate these prospective illegal immigrants as ‘refugees,’ as if that will somehow ameliorate the costs to American taxpayers and the public safety problems that have resulted,” Vaughan said.
A welfare bonanza for migrants
And one of the more sinister side-effects of the new refugee program is that it will result in a huge net increase in social welfare benefits for the migrants.
“As an added bonus for the Central Americans, coming in as a refugee means they are instantly eligible for cash assistance, housing, job training, language instruction and free health care,” Vaughan noted.
Vaughn said the move will put financial pressure on cities that the Obama administration is asking to “welcome” the new immigrants.
“It’s going to bankrupt some of the communities that are forced to absorb these new arrivals,” she said. “I think the Democrats are going to pay a huge political price for these increasingly outrageous executive actions that make a mockery of our immigration laws and, frankly, insult our intelligence.”
Ann Corcoran, the refugee watchdog who blogs at Refugee Resettlement Watch, said it’s all about importing cheap labor for establishment Republicans and votes for the Democrats.
Companies like Swift & Co., a Brazilian-owned meat packer that was raided in 2006 for using illegal immigrant labor, are now being provided with that cheap Third World labor by the government’s refugee program. The only difference is that now it’s all legal.
“Swift has been hiring Somali refugees to work in its U.S. plants for years,” Corcoran said. “And we, the taxpayers, get to subsidize their workers’ lifestyles with welfare because they don’t pay them a living wage.”
Redefining the meaning of ‘refugee’
Corcoran said the Central Americans don’t even meet the current definition of a refugee under international law. Most are economic migrants looking for better employment opportunities.
“They aren’t refugees. Refugees have to prove they were persecuted,” she said. “Running from crime or economic deprivation does not qualify you as a refugee under the United Nations’ definition. They have been working for years on expanding the definition. Even war is not a reason to become a refugee in the sense that you are permanently resettled in another country. It has to be that you were persecuted because of your religion or your race or your political beliefs.”
Corcoran said she expects a huge surge at the border this summer and fall.
“It occurred to me that we’re going to have a huge wave of people coming across the Southern border this year. They’re looking at Europe and how successful it’s been there, and they know this is Obama’s last year in office,” she said. “So look for a huge movement to swarm our borders, by whatever means. This is it. A great migration movement is getting ready to take place.”
But don’t look for the explosion of “refugees” from Central America to get too much media attention. If it does, that will just play into the hands of the Donald Trump presidential campaign.
“If they overplay their hand and make it so blatant and so huge this year, it could backfire and they could end up with Donald Trump in the White House,” Corcoran said.
The flow of Central American children and families declined somewhat during the 2015 budget year, but border agents have noted significant rise in the numbers of immigrants from both groups in recent months. Since October, more than 16,000 children traveling alone and more than 20,800 people traveling as families have been caught, according to the AP report.
Until now, the government had stopped short of calling such immigrants refugees, all the while working to get the status changed.
Obama implementing U.N. Agenda 2030
In fact, the Obama agenda on the migrant issue mirrors that of the United Nations.
World leaders from more than 100 countries met in New York City in September last year to approve the United Nations Agenda 2030 initiative for sustainability.
The Agenda 2030 document claims as its goals the elimination of poverty and all forms of inequality over the next 15 years. The document lists 17 goals that are to be met by 2030.
Goal No. 10 is to “reduce inequality within and among countries,” with the buzzword “inequality” being a euphemism for wealth redistribution.
The document states that one of the ways to achieve the U.N.’s desired equality it to, “Facilitate orderly, safe, regular and responsible migration and mobility of people, including through the implementation of planned and well-managed migration policies.”
Goal No. 16 goes a step further calling for “peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development” and providing access to justice for all. One of the methods listed as critical for the achievement of this goal is to “provide legal identity for all, including birth registration” of all babies.
WND has previously reported on the U.N. plan to provide a universal biometric ID for all citizens on the planet, starting with refugees.
The U.S. has been taking in about 70,000 foreign refugees annually for the past decade. But Obama has upped that to 85,000 in fiscal 2016 and 100,000 in 2017. This includes 10,000 refugees from the jihadist hotbed of Syria in 2016 and “many more” in 2017. The Congress fully funded all of these demands, along with no penalty for sanctuary cities, when it passed the $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill last month.
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Unlike most other types of immigrants, refugees are eligible for a full slate of social welfare benefits on day one of their arrival.
The U.S. State Department oversees the refugee program with help from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and nine private agencies that contract with the federal government. The nine agencies – six of which are affiliated with Christian and Jewish aide groups – receive hundreds of millions of federal taxpayer dollars to place the refugees in more than 180 cities and towns across the U.S.