Reading Drudge This Morning: An Executive-order Amnesty (updated)

Here’s an AP article, linked to from Drudge: “Immigration Activists Urge Obama to Act Boldly” The bottom line is this: immigration activists, emboldened by Obama’s executive-order amnesty for those illegally brought to the U.S. as minors, are now calling on him to repeat the process for others: “Activists want it expanded to include more immigrants, such as those who have been in the U.S. for at least five years or who since their arrival have had children.”

This isn’t new: I’ve read similar calls in the past, with activists demanding a complete halt to deportations, and various types of amnesties. In particular, I’d read the call to keep parents of citizen-children in the U.S. — which would seem to encompass virtually all immigrants, who would, if they haven’t already, pretty quickly find a way to get pregnant or father a child if it meant staying in the U.S.

And ordinarily one would say, “well, that’s just a bunch of activists. They can say anything they want. Plenty of people have made plenty of preposterous demands in the past.” But what if Obama does it?

UPDATE:

In the Tribune today (linked to from the LA Times, where it’s available online), a story that indicates this executive-order amnesty is all the more likely:

Obama administration officials are considering allowing bond hearings for immigrants in prolonged detention, officials said, a shift that could slow the pace of deportations because immigration courts expedite cases of incarcerated immigrants. Several thousand immigrants could be released from jails across the country if judges are allowed to hear their cases and grant bond, advocates say.
. . .
With legislation at an apparent impasse, the White House is expected to roll out several administrative changes, such as bond hearings, to reduce deportations in coming months.

Officials are considering scrapping current instructions on whom to deport, for example, and drafting memos that set new priorities.

Immigration agents are supposed to focus first on expelling immigrants who have entered the country illegally within the last three years, for example, as well as those with criminal records, and those with repeat immigration violations.

The proposed revisions would shorten the time from three years to two weeks, and remove repeat violators from the priority list. The new directives also would instruct officers to consider whether detainees have close family ties in the United States.

So only those who have entered in the last two weeks and who have no family ties would be subject to deportation? This is such a narrowing of scope that this is practically a complete amnesty, especially if it’s coupled with complete disinterest in preventing people from working under the table or with false or stolen identification. Wow.

Reading Drudge this morning: an executive-order amnesty (updated)