Grassley, Lee: Abuse of Authority Creates Pathway to U.S. Citizenship
WASHINGTON – Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Senator Mike Lee of Utah are seeking details on an Obama Administration practice that puts individuals in the country illegally on a pathway to citizenship. The scheme allows those granted deferred deportation to take advantage of an administratively created benefit called “advance parole,” which would allow such undocumented immigrants to gain lawful permanent residence, commonly known as a green card. The immigrant can then later apply for U.S. citizenship.
The Obama Administration is expanding the scope of the immigration parole statute, which was designed to allow non-visa holders temporary access into the country on a case-by-case basis only for “urgent humanitarian reasons” or in cases of “significant public benefit.” Immigrants applying for deferred deportation are now being encouraged to concurrently apply for advance parole, a benefit created through administrative action to certify that the applicant qualifies for immigration parole when re-entering the country after travel abroad. Once an undocumented immigrant has left the country and has been granted re-entry as a parolee, he or she becomes eligible to apply for a green card, opening the door to citizenship. Some organizations, including universities, are creating international trips for the express purpose of securing parole status for deferred deportation recipients. The advance parole scheme also allows undocumented immigrants to evade legal re-entry prohibitions for individuals who have overstayed their visas or are otherwise illegally in the country.
In a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, Grassley and Lee requested details on the practice as well as statistics on the number of undocumented immigrants who have been granted parole status via the advance parole scheme and how many of them subsequently obtained a green card as a result.
Full text of the Grassley-Lee letter follows.
We write to express our continuing concerns about the manner in which the Administration has been abusing its immigration parole authority generally, and, more specifically, to obtain answers to questions about abuses of the advance parole program as applied to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
On June 15, 2012, President Obama stated from the White House Rose Garden in his speech announcing the DACA program: “Now, let's be clear -- this is not amnesty, this is not immunity. This is not a path to citizenship.” It is now abundantly clear this is not true.
The grant of advance parole to DACA recipients does indeed open the door to undocumented immigrants to gain U.S. citizenship. Though the federal statute governing the parole authority requires that parole be granted only for “urgent humanitarian reasons” or in cases of “significant public benefit,” United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) policy has expanded potential grounds of advance parole approval for DACA recipients to “educational purposes, employment purposes, or humanitarian purposes.” USCIS guidance adds that “[e]ducational purposes include, but are not limited to, semester abroad programs or academic research.” A DACA recipient granted advance parole to participate in a semester abroad program, for example, is paroled into the United States upon return and is thereby made eligible to adjust to lawful permanent resident status if they otherwise qualify for one of the existing immigrant visa categories. After five years as a permanent resident, a person may apply for U.S. citizenship. During a Judiciary Committee hearing on July 21, 2015, USCIS Director Rodriguez did not contest Senator Lee’s statement that return to the U.S. of DACA recipients as parolees lifts a “significant legal impediment” to their ability to obtain lawful permanent residence and, ultimately, citizenship.
This path to citizenship for DACA recipients has been known and discussed openly by immigration lawyers for years. In August 2013, for example, the Legal Action Center of the American Immigration Council published a “practice advisory” on advance parole for DACA recipients that concluded that “for those DACA recipients who are married to a U.S citizen, or qualify as children of U.S. citizens, travel on advance parole may have the dual benefits of eliminating exposure to the unlawful presence ground of inadmissibility and creating eligibility to adjust status in the United States.” The practice advisory further reveals:
At least one practitioner has shared that a DACA recipient successfully adjusted after traveling abroad on advance parole. Similarly, [Temporary Protected Status] recipients who originally entered without inspection, and thus – like DACA recipients – were unable to adjust, reportedly have been able to adjust after returning on advance parole. In these cases, their status as parolees upon their return rendered them eligible for adjustment.
Since 2013, the number of DACA recipients who have obtained advance parole, left the country and returned as parolees, and then adjusted to lawful permanent resident status can only have increased.
A recent story in a California newspaper describes how exploitation of this loophole has now become a cottage industry. According to the story, undocumented, DACA-recipient students at various Southern Californian universities have started going on organized “study abroad” trips to Mexico after securing advance parole from USCIS, returning as parolees who are then eligible to adjust to lawful permanent resident status. One professor of Chicano Studies at Cal State Long Beach is described as having “discovered” the advance parole provision in 2014 and used it to take two students to Mexico that spring. In December 2015, that same professor used advance parole to take 30 undocumented students from across Southern California to study and visit family in Mexico. He plans to take another round of students this summer.
In light of the foregoing, please answer the following questions:
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