WASHINGTON – Speaking to the Latin-American Development Bank on Friday, Vice President Joe Biden made formal the anticipated Obama administration plan to grant refugee status to some people under the age of 21 in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador whose parents legally reside in the U.S.
WND reported in July that representatives of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, or UNHRC, were holding “intense discussions” about the possibility of extending U.N. protection to the thousands of Central American crossing the border with Mexico illegally by defining them as “refugees” seeking asylum from domestic and political violence in their home nations.
While details of the plan remain sketchy, the extension of the U.S. State Department-administered refugee program that currently allows some 4,000 Cubans and Colombians to enter the U.S. legally would open the U.S. embassies in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala to families seeking to obtain refugee status for their children.
While Biden’s announcement had few details, conceivably State Department airplanes could be provided to transport the Central American children granted refugee status. It would enable them to avoid the risk of paying coyotes and criminal gangs to travel through Mexico cross the U.S. southern border.
Unnamed U.S. officials told reporters prior to Biden’s announcement that children deemed refugees will be allowed to work immediately upon entry in the U.S. and apply for permanent residency the next year and for naturalization five years later.
‘Abusive new policy’
Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., in a statement posted on his House website, criticized Obama’s plan to extend refugee status to Central American children as “simply a government-granted border surge.”
Goodlatte said that under the “abusive new policy, unlawful immigrants in the United States, once they are granted executive amnesty by the president, can now rely on the Obama administration to bring their child, and possibly their spouse, who are in Central America to our country.”
He specifically objected to the granting of amnesty.
“Rather than take the necessary steps to end the crisis at the border, the Obama administration perpetuates it by abusing a legal tool meant to be used sparingly to bring people to the United States and instead apply it to the masses in Central America.”
Goodlatte worried that if Obama moves forward to grant immigrants legal status through a series of executive orders issued without congressional approval or oversight, as expected next week, “the policy announced today could open Pandora’s box, allowing potentially even more people to come to the United States.”
“This is bad policy,” Goodlatte insisted, “and undermines the integrity of our immigration system.”
Goodlatte pointed out that Obama’s extension of refugee status generally to Latin American children violates the policy of “humanitarian parole” announced on the website of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
There, the USCIS points out that the agency has the authority to “grant parole temporarily to a anyone applying for admission into the United States based on urgent humanitarian reasons or if there is a significant public benefit.”
But the grant of temporary parole is limited to “a period of time that corresponds with the length of the emergency or humanitarian situation.”
The USCIS policy of “humanitarian parole” further specifies that “parolees must depart the United States before the expiration of the parole.”
The definition of “refugee status” as a grant of permanent residency and the possibility of citizenship is more consistent with various United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees international conventions.
