The GOP’s draft 2015 “omnibus” spending bill reportedly includes $948 million to help poor and unskilled Central American migrants establish themselves in the United States, but includes no effective restrictions on President Barack Obama’s plan to provide work permits and tax payments to millions of resident illegal immigrants.
That new spending works out to $16,928 for each of the 56,000 youths, young adults and children who crossed the border during the 12 months up to October 2014.
Prior to October, Obama’s officials sent only 1,901 of the migrants back home to Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua, according to a federal report.
Much of the $948 million may also be used to care for the next wave of illegals who could flood across the border during the summer. The influx in the summer of 2015 is expected to be large, because Obama is offering work permits and social security numbers to at least five million illegals already in the country.
The $948 million fund is part of the one-year, $1 trillion 2015 spending plan described in a late-night report from The New York Times.
The GOP leadership has given merely lip service to supporting the opposition among GOP legislators and much of the public to Obama’s welcome for foreign migrants, and is now refusing to direct the Department of Homeland Security not to spend any funds on implementing the Obama amnesty.
Instead, the leadership, led by House Speaker John Boehner, drafted a bill imposing a 60-day spending limit for Obama’s immigration agencies.
The planned 60-day spending limit is largely symbolic, because the most important immigration agency can operate on fees paid by the illegals.
“Leadership is basically giving in to every facet of Obama’s amnesty. We’re giving up an astonishing amount of leverage on every issue imaginable,” said one Hill aide.
The struggle between Boehner’s business wing and the populist conservative wing, has received little coverage in the established media, even though GOP legislators are calling for the public to protest their leadership’s policies. Top GOP officials have said they would like to pass their own amnesty and foreign worker bill in 2015.
Obama’s amnesty, announced Nov. 21, minimizes enforcement of immigration law against all 12 million illegals in the United States, and creates enforcement loopholes for new migrants coming over the border or flying into U.S. airports on temporary visas.
The plan also puts many illegals on a fast-track to citizenship, and increases the inflow of university-trained migrants who can gain citizenship if they compete for any professional jobs sought by U.S. college graduates.
The cost of Obama’s amnesty is expected to reach $2 trillion over 50 years, or roughly $22,000 per new U.S. college graduate.
In 2014, Obama’s agencies accepted the children, youths and adults delivered to them at the border by paid escorts, before providing them with health screenings and air transport to parents and family members throughout the United States.
Obama’s deputies are also spending at least $7 million to provide free lawyers to the migrants so they can win court cases to remain in the United States. Up to 1,901 were sent home by October.
The money likely will also be used to support family units of women and children that cross the border.
In fiscal 2014, roughly 66,000 people in family units crossed the border. Only 582 were repatriated before October. Nearly all were allowed to apply for residency, and either attend American schools or apply for work permits.
