Daily Caller — President Barack Obama’s Nov. 21 amnesty puts millions of illegals on a fast-track to citizenship, Utah Sen. Mike Lee announced Thursday.
Obama and his administration “have cleared the pathway to citizenship for millions of people who have crossed our borders illegally,” Lee said in a Thursday speech on the Senate floor.
“They know what they have done, and it is illegal,” he added.
Obama’s amnesty allows illegals with U.S.-born children to briefly leave the country, perhaps for a business meeting in Canada, and then be given “advanced parole” by border officials that lets them legally return to the United States.
Once they have legally returned under “advanced parole,” they can be immediately sponsored for a green card and citizenship by their adult child, he said.
That process bypasses U.S. law that requires illegals to leave the country for 10 years before their U.S.-born adult children can sponsor them for citizenship, Lee said.
Lee spoke shortly before Republican House Speaker John Boehner tried to muscle through a 2015 budget that doesn’t bar federal spending to implement Obama’s amnesty.
The budget’s support for Obama’s amnesty is opposed by numerous GOP legislators and a significant slice of the GOP base.
Obama’s amnesty offers work permits, drivers’ licenses, Medicare and Social Security to five million illegals who have children with citizenship or green cards.
The five million could get citizenship via Obama’s new parole technique.
“The president claims that he is not changing this rule, but that’s exactly what he’s doing,” Lee said.
“So long as you have a business meeting in Toronto. you can get permission to leave and be paroled back into the country on your return … [and] once you do that. … You can get a green card and get citizenship,” Lee said.
The method is illegal, said Lee, because Congress has narrowly defined when the administration can offer “advanced parole” to foreigners, he said.
Parole can only be offered to people “only on a case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit.”
These reasons include allowing a person without a visa to attend the imminent funeral of a relative, or to act as a witness in a trial, he said.
Obama’s plans to provide parole to many returning illegals “clearly violate U.S. law,” he said.
