Obama opens door to more Central American refugees

WASHINGTON—The White House announced plans to expand its migrant initiatives yesterday, potentially opening the door for thousands of new Central American refugees.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in a statement the expansion addresses the humanitarian crisis created by thousands fleeing violence and gang activity in Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala.

In 2014, President Barack Obama launched the Central American Minors (CAM) program to tackle a spike of Unaccompanied Alien Children surging across America’s southern border. The program allowed lawfully present individuals in the U.S. to request admission for their unmarried children under age 21. The new expansion will widen the range of persons eligible for entry. Individuals can now request entry for their entire families, including aunts, uncles, cousins, and older children.

The Obama administration said previous resettlement criteria was too narrow and denied many potential refugees with legitimate claims. But since the beginning, resettlement programs have been problematic and some fear expanding them will make conditions worse. Under the previous guidelines, many complained the admission process was too slow, forcing some to pay smugglers to bring in family members still stuck in dangerous situations.

As of yesterday, about 9,500 persons have applied for the CAM program, but that number could grow rapidly with the broader criteria.

Officials said only about 270 have been successfully resettled so far.

“What we have seen is that our current efforts to date have been insufficient to address the number of people who may have legitimate refugee claims and there are insufficient pathways for those people to present their claims for adjudication,” said Amy Pope, White House deputy Homeland Security adviser.

But some point to failures in the past and say expanding the program will only worsen conditions for both immigrants and U.S. citizens.

Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., called the expansion a continuation of a government-sanctioned border surge.

“By allowing unlawful immigrants to benefit from this program, the Obama administration undermines the integrity of our immigration system and the rule of law, and makes the system unfair for those who seek to come to the United States legally,” Goodlatte said in a statement. “Rather than take the steps necessary to end the ongoing 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 applying it to the masses in Central America.”

More than 90,000 unaccompanied children have come across the U.S. border since 2013. The DHS and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services began to place the influx of children in government facilities, while they figured out next steps. But as space ran out, the Obama administration expedited its admission process and started placing children in the homes of American sponsors.

In January, a bipartisan Senate investigation discovered immigration officials often didn’t take down the names and phone numbers of sponsors. The lax policies created a new crisis as thousands of children were trafficked as slaves, abused, or simply disappeared.

In announcing the new initiatives, officials admitted this will not solve previous immigration problems but insisted allowing more families to stay together is a step in the right direction.

“This will increase the number of individuals to whom we are able to provide humanitarian protection while combating human smuggling operations,” said Jeh Johnson, DHS secretary.

But some fear expanding initiatives will only exasperate previous failures.

“It’s a known fact that under the CAM program, illegal immigrants benefitting from President Obama’s executive amnesty are eligible for the program, allowing them to put down even more roots in the U.S. Expanding the program is a bad idea and will not solve this immigration problem,” said Sen. David Vitter, R-La. “We absolutely need to be doing everything we can to control the unaccompanied alien children crisis, but the CAM program is a band-aid for a much deeper wound.”