The Obama administration is actively planning to defy a federal judge's injunction that blocked it from issuing work permits to illegal immigrants as part of President Obama's executive amnesty actions, according to a newly leaked internal Department of Homeland Security memo from an off-the-record meeting.
In June, four months after Texas federal judge Andrew Hanen ordered Obama to temporarily stop issuing work permits known as Employment Authorization Documents (EADs), DHS's immigration policy makers held a "Regulations Retreat" to discuss various ways to bypass the injunction, according to The Hill's Ian M. Smith, an investigative associate with the Immigration Reform Law Institute.
"From a memo recording these discussions, we now know that the Obama DHS has, rather than pausing to allow the courts to assess the constitutionality of its enforcement nullification initiatives, been gearing up to roll out one or more of four plans drawn up at the meeting, each one designed to provide EADs to millions of nonimmigrants, including those lawfully present and visa overstayers, crippling the actual employment-based visa system on the federal statute-book," Smith said.
One of the options would provide EADs to "all individuals living in the United States," including all illegal aliens, visa-overstayers and H-1B guest-workers. While DHS doesn't explicitly say it, the plan would grant work permits to more than 9 million illegal immigrants currently in the country, according to Smith.
Another plan would provide EADs only to "those on certain unexpired non-immigrant visas," Smith said.
Providing EADs to any of those individuals "is in direct violation of Congress's Immigration & Nationality Act and works to dramatically subvert our carefully wrought visa system," he added.
Because an EAD is not a green card, the immigrants would still "face difficulties in pursuing permanent residence due to ineligibility or being subject to unlawful presence inadmissibility for which a waiver is required," according to one of the memo's authors. Immigrants would eventually have to "adjust their status" but could not do so without showing lawful status.
That rule could change, though, according to Smith. "The DHS 'macro-level policy goal,' we're told, is to assist individuals to stay 'until they are ready and able to become immigrants.' This would seem to say that DHS, the largest federal law enforcement agency in the nation, is banking on awarding those who've broken our laws and violated our national sovereignty."
Smith concluded: "Bottom line: The memo foreshadows more tactical offensives in a giant administrative amnesty for all 12 million illegal aliens who've broken our immigration laws (and many other laws) that will emerge before the next inaugural in January 2016."
