At the close of 2014, two disturbing stories illustrate how the Obama administration is deliberately compromising national security by drastically expanding a fraud-infested program that lets rich foreigners buy U.S. visas and losing track of 96% of the illegal immigrants recently ordered deported.
This is outrageous by any standards. In the first case, an obscure program known as EB-5 that lets wealthy foreign investors essentially buy their way into the United States has skyrocketed under Obama. The capital area’s conservative newspaper published a distressing story this week that reveals the visa program has mushroomed under Obama despite its history of fraud and congressional concerns about national security risks. Buy your way into the USA, says our commander-in-chief.
Since Obama took office the number of immigrants who have entered the U.S. legally via EB-5 has risen an astounding 700%, according to government figures cited in the article. Word has spread among rich foreign nationals because “the number of foreign citizens applying for the visas has grown even faster, from 853 in 2008 to 12,453 in 2014,” the story says. A former federal immigration official quoted in the article confirms that the Obama administration has been pushing the visa program via a “major promotion.” An overwhelming majority of the “investors” are from communist China.
As if this weren’t bad enough, a Houston news station investigating the recent influx of Central American illegal immigrants obtained downright scary information after duking out with the government for six months. Thousands of Central American families caught crossing the border between July 18 and October 28 had to be released on their own recognizance because there wasn’t enough detention space, according to the documents obtained by the Texas news station from the Executive Office of Immigration Review (EOIR). All were ordered to appear before an immigration judge at a later date.
Here is where it gets really crazy; 96% of the removal orders occurred “in absentia,” which means the illegal immigrant, not surprisingly, didn’t show up for the hearing. So, essentially, the U.S. government deported a ghost—or the courtroom wall—in nearly all of these cases. That means the violators are still somewhere in the country and nobody really knows where. Here is one figure reluctantly provided by the EOIR; of the 15,614 families caught crossing the border, but not detained, 4,197 were ordered removed from the country in absentia. No wonder the government fought hard to keep the information from going public.
Our government trusts foreign nationals who have violated our laws by entering the country illegally, then releases them into our communities and trusts them to show up in court at a later day! This happens all the time, the EOIR admits in the news segment, but not in such large numbers. Typically the agency reports an annual 11 to 15% “in absentia” rate. Many Americans might agree that, after the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history, no foreign national in the country illegally should be released into the community and trusted to show up in court for a court hearing.
