Judicial Watch Blog Report Starts Media Brush Fire over Stealth Amnesty

From time to time, I've mentioned the work of our excellent blogger, Irene Garcia, a former Los Angeles Times reporter who tracks corruption news every day for Judicial Watch on our blogCorruption Chronicles.  (Click here to check out Irene's work.)

Well this week, on April 2nd to be exact, Irene started a bit of a media brush fire with a blog piece on the Obama administration's stealth amnesty scheme. First, let's take a look at what Irene reported in her blog entitled, "DHS to Grant Aliens 'Unlawful Presence Waivers:'"

In its quest to implement stealth amnesty, the Obama Administration is working behind the scenes to halt the deportation of certain illegal immigrants by granting them "unlawful presence waivers." 

The new measure would apply to illegal aliens who are relatives of American citizens. Here is how it would work, according to a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announcementposted in today's Federal Register, the daily journal of the U.S. government; the agency will grant "unlawful presence waivers" to illegal aliens who can prove they have a relative that's a U.S. citizen. 

Currently such aliens must return to their native country and request a waiver of inadmissibility in an existing overseas immigrant visa process. In other words, they must enter the U.S. legally as thousands of foreigners do on a yearly basis. Besides the obvious security issues, changing this would be like rewarding bad behavior in a child. It doesn't make sense.

Irene then properly characterized the policy as part of the Obama administration's "bigger plan to blow off Congress," as it attempts to enact amnesty absent any immigration reform passed by Congress.

Indeed, as I've pointed out many times in this space, the Obama administration is intent on granting amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants with or without approval by Congress -- and despite stiff public opposition.  

Granting these new "unlawful presence waivers" is just one amnesty tool. Another is the DHS policy of "selective deportation," which means that immigration officials can simply use "prosecutorial discretion" to dismiss deportation proceedings against a wide variety of illegal aliens, even thoseconvicted of serious crimes. (You can read more about the Obama administration's stealth amnesty plan, including documents uncovered by Judicial Watch as part of its aggressive investigation of the scandal, here.)

The Drudge Report immediately seized upon Irene's story, posting it to the site with the headline "Big Sis to Grant Illegal Aliens 'Unlawful Presence Waivers," along with a photo of Obama Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. The Internet then took hold of the story and ran with it, as our critics at the leftist Media Matters noted.

And, it all started with your Judicial Watch.

Of course, the often overlooked component of the Obama amnesty plan is its impact on the 2012 elections. By granting amnesty to millions of illegal aliens, the Obama administration/campaign surely hopes to bring a massive group of dependable (and potentially illegal) voters to the polls in November 2012 to help re-elect the president. 

This, combined with the Justice Department's unwillingness to enforce elements of the National Voter Registration Act requiring states to keep clean voter rolls, is a threat to the integrity of the 2012 elections.

For this reason, and many others, JW launched its 2012 Election Integrity Project. Our investigation has found that many states have voter rolls that have more "voters" on the rolls than individuals eligible to vote.  Evidently, some jurisdictions are not even bothering to remove dead people from the voter rolls.  This is a recipe for voter fraud, so we've told election officials to clean up the rolls or we will file a lawsuit to force them to do so.

And speaking of election integrity, I'd like to let you know about a very important event that will take place April 27-28, 2012 in Houston, Texas. Our client True the Vote will be hosting a 2012 True the Vote Summit to "protect the virtue of our vote and the integrity of our elections." I'm scheduled to be on-hand to talk about Judicial Watch's election integrity work along with an impressive list of guest speakers. If you have the ability to make the trip, I highly recommend it. Here's a link to the invitation.  Hope to see you there.