Obama Health Plan to Cover 12 Million Illegals

By: David A. Patten
Newsmax
On Friday, Democrats moved one step closer to giving free health insurance to the nation’s estimated 12 million illegal aliens when they successfully defeated a Republican-backed amendment, offered by Rep. Dean Heller, R-Nev., that would have prevented illegal aliens from receiving government-subsidized health care under the proposed plan backed by House Democrats and President Barack Obama.
The House Ways and Means Committee nixed the Heller amendment by a 26-to-15 vote along straight party lines, and followed this action by passing the 1,018-page bill early Friday morning by a 23-to-18 margin, with three Democrats voting against the plan.
The Democratic plan will embrace Obama’s vision of bringing free government medical care to more than 45 million uninsured people in America – a significant portion of whom are illegal aliens.
According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, costs under the Obama plan being proposed by the House will saddle citizens with $1.04 trillion in new federal outlays over the next decade.
Congressional Democrats and Obama have argued that their health plan is necessary to contain rising health care costs.
But, last Thursday, CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf testified before the Senate Budget Committee and warned lawmakers that the proposed “legislation significantly expands the federal responsibility for health care costs."
A key factor increasing costs is that Democratic plan provides for blanket coverage to as much as 15 percent of the U.S. population not currently insured, including illegals.
Democrats had insisted throughout the health-care reform debate that illegals would be ineligible for the so-called public option plan that is to be subsidized by taxpayers.
"We're not going to cover undocumented aliens, undocumented workers," Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, told reporters in May. "That's too politically explosive."
Republicans, however, point out that the Democrats, by refusing to accept the Heller amendment, would deny health agencies from conducting simple database checks to verify citizenship. Many states give illegals driver licenses, which will be sufficient to get free health care under the plan.
Critics also contend that millions of illegals who already have counterfeit Social Security cards or other fraudulent documents. There is no enforcement mechanism in the legislation, experts say, to prevent illegals who use fake IDs to obtain jobs from also obtaining taxpayer-subsidized health insurance.
GOP representatives introduced the amendment to provide a way to weed out non-citizens from the program.
A description of the amendment on Heller's Web site state it would "better screen applicants for subsidized health care to ensure they are actually citizens or otherwise entitled to it."
The Web post added, "The underlying bill is insufficient for the purpose of preventing illegal aliens from accessing the bill’s proposed benefits, as it does not provide mechanisms allowing those administering the program to ensure illegal aliens cannot access taxpayer-funded subsidies and benefits."
The Heller amendment would have required that individuals applying for the public health care option would be subject to two systems used to verify immigration status already in use by the government: The Income and Eligibility Verification System (IEVS) and the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program.
The two systems cross-reference Social Security numbers and employment information to establish whether an individual is a U.S. citizen.
Critics: Free Health Care Means More Illegals
A recent Rasmussen Reports poll found that an overwhelming 80 percent of Americans oppose covering illegals in any public health care bill.
Anti-immigration activists say the availability of low-cost benefits, including health insurance and in-state tuition, will only lure more immigrants to come to the United States.
Political analyst Dick Morris, in his recently released best-selling book “Catastrophe”, warns that giving illegal free health care will lead to a flood of new illegals who can take advantage of such a benefit not offered in their home countries.
William Gheen, president of Americans for Legal Immigration, agrees with that sentiment, writing, "Each state and federal elected official must know that illegal aliens should not be given licenses, in-state tuition, mortgages, bank accounts, welfare, or any other benefit short of emergency medical care and law enforcement accommodations before they are deported."
But a small fraction of illegals end up deported, as many make widespread use of fake IDs to easily gain access to government benefits programs.
"Experts suggest that approximately 75 percent of working-age illegal aliens use fraudulent Social Security cards to obtain employment," wrote Ronald W. Mortensen in a recent Center for Immigration Studies research paper. Mortensen says one of the big misconceptions about illegals is that they are undocumented.
James R. Edwards Jr., co-author of The Congressional Politics of Immigration Reform, recently wrote on National Review Online that "it's hard to envision how health reform can avoid tripping the immigration booby trap."
Edwards says none of the legislation under consideration actually requires any state, federal, or local agency to check the immigration status of those who apply for the program.
The assumption is that companies have vetted their employees to ensure they are eligibility for legal employment – a difficult task for employers given the active market in fraudulent documents. Thus Edwards maintains "some of the money distributed … inevitably would go to illegal aliens."
The estimates of illegal aliens in the United States without health insurance vary. The most commonly cited statistic, attributed to the Center for Immigration Statistics and the U.S. Census Bureau, holds that 15 percent to 22 percent of the nation's 46 million uninsured are illegal aliens. That would be between 6.9 million and 10.1 million people. During the 2008 presidential campaign, Obama claimed the nation United States has 12 million or more undocumented aliens.
John Sheils of the Lewin Group, a health care consulting firm owned by UnitedHealth Group, recently told National Public Radio that about 6.1 million illegals – about half of all illegals in the United States – lack documentation and therefore would not be legally eligible for benefits under the current health care reforms.
Sheils says the other half of the nation's illegals – 5 million to 6 million – use false documents to obtain on-the-books employment. Many of them are already insured under their employers' plans, he added.
"A lot of those people are getting employer health benefits as part of their compensation," Sheils told NPR.
Certainly, some contend that undocumented workers who are gainfully employed and receiving benefits such as health insurance are contributing to society. But the fact remains that, once equipped with a fake ID, a person in the United States illegally can obtain both a job and the benefits that go with it.
Estimates of the cost of providing illegals with medical care vary. Most uninsured illegals who need medical attention obtain it from hospital emergency rooms. And several states are already straining under the huge burden of paying for the health costs of illegal aliens.
According to the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), in 2004 California's estimated cost of unreimbursed medical care was $1.4 billion. Texas estimated its cost at $850 million annually, and Arizona at $400 million.
Non-border states shoulder heavy burdens as well. Virginia's annual cost of providing health care for undocumented workers is approximately $100 million per year, FAIR reports, while Florida's health care cost is about $300 million annually.
One of the ironies of the proposed legislation is that it would fine American citizens who opt not to purchase insurance coverage, but would exempt illegals from such fines. This is presumably due to the fact that they are not supposed to participate in the program anyway.
Even if no illegals were likely to benefit from health care reform, Democrats have made it clear that amnesty is the next item on their ambitious legislative agenda.
"I've got to do health care, I've got to do energy, and then I'm looking very closely at doing immigration," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., declared in June.
Reid explained the urgent need for amnesty in terms very similar to those that Democrats have used to press for health care reform. "We have an immigration system that's broken and needs repair," Reid said.
Immigration expert Edwards, for one, says health-care reform may itself need serious medical attention before it is healthy enough pass through Congress.
"The American people may soon realize how much health reform will benefit immigrants and cost the native-born," he writes. "When that happens, the volatile politics of immigration could derail universal health care."

Obama's Aunt Reportedly Living Illegally in Boston

The Illinois senator's aunt has been residing in Boston public housing since her request for asylum was denied four years ago.

WASHINGTON -- Barack Obama's aunt, a Kenyan woman who has been quietly living in public housing in Boston, is in the United States illegally after an immigration judge rejected her request for asylum four years ago, The Associated Press has learned.

Zeituni Onyango, 56, referred to as "Aunti Zeituni" in Obama's memoir, was instructed to leave the United States by a U.S. immigration judge who denied her asylum request, a person familiar with the matter told the AP late Friday. This person spoke on condition of anonymity because no one was authorized to discuss Onyango's case.

Information about the deportation case was disclosed and confirmed by two separate sources, one of them a federal law enforcment official. The information they made available is known to officials in the federal government, but the AP could not establish whether anyone at a political level in the Bush administration or in the McCain campaign had been involved in its release.

Onyango's refusal to leave the country would represent an administrative, non-criminal violation of U.S. immigration law, meaning such cases are handled outside the criminal court system. Estimates vary, but many experts believe there are more than 10 million such immigrants in the United States.

The AP could not reach Onyango immediately for comment. No one answered the telephone number listed in her name late Friday. It was unclear why her request for asylum was rejected in 2004.

Onyango is not a relative whom Obama has discussed in campaign appearances and, unlike Obama's father and grandmother, is not someone who has been part of the public discussion about his personal life.

A spokeswoman for U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, Kelly Nantel, said the government does not comment on an individual's citizenship status or immigration case.

Onyango's case -- coming to light just days before the presidential election -- led to an unusual nationwide directive within Immigrations and Customs Enforcement requiring any deportations prior to Tuesday's election to be approved at least at the level of ICE regional directors, the U.S. law enforcement official told the AP.

The unusual directive suggests that the Bush administration is sensitive to the political implications of Onyango's case coming to light so close to the election.

One of the sources acknowledged he was not a supporter of Obama or John McCain and said he has no plans to vote on Tuesday. He said that was not a motive for releasing the information.

Kenya is in eastern Africa between Somalia and Tanzania. The country has been fractured in violence in recent years, including a period of two months of bloodshed after December 2007 that killed 1,500 people.

The disclosure about Onyango came just one day after Obama's presidential campaign confirmed to the Times of London that Onyango, who has lived quietly in public housing in South Boston for five years, was Obama's half aunt on his father's side.

It was not immediately clear how Onyango might have qualified for public housing with a standing deportation order.

Obama Wants 12 Million Illegals to Get Citizenship

By: David A. Patten

A Barack Obama administration would be a “nation killer” if Democrats attain a “supermajority” in the Senate, a leading conservative figure on immigration warned Tuesday.

Obama also has said he wants to make the 12 million illegal aliens in the U.S. citizens as soon as he can — an amnesty program that would make them legally entitled to full government benefits, including Social Security and health care.

William Gheen, president of the Raleigh, N.C.-based Americans for Legal Immigration PAC (ALIPAC), says Obama’s plan would make it politically impossible to secure America’s borders. He describes Obama and a new Democratic Congress as a “worst-case scenario” for border and immigration security.

“I would paint that scenario as a nation killer,” Gheen, a former campaign consultant and an outspoken advocate for stronger border control policies, tells Newsmax. “I would expect amnesty to pass within a year. That means in the next presidential election, you will have a new voting bloc of 15 million illegal aliens who turn into voters.

“And that voting bloc,” he says, “especially in the Southwest United States, would be enough to take full control of most city, state, and county governments, thus destroying any future hopes for immigration enforcement or border security.”

Although GOP nominee John McCain has rarely confronted Obama during the campaign over immigration — presumably to avoid alienating Hispanic voters — Obama’s record reflects a clear focus on expanding entitlements to undocumented workers.

As a state senator in Illinois, for example, Obama co-sponsored that state’s version of the DREAM Act, which allowed youngsters in the country illegally to receive in-state tuition. He later supported similar legislation in the U.S. Senate.

During a September campaign swing, Obama told the North Carolina Public Radio station WUNC that the children of illegal immigrants should have an opportunity to attend community colleges.

“For us to deny them access to community college, even though they’ve never lived in Mexico, as least as far as they can tell, is to deny that this is how we’ve always built this country up,” Obama said.

According to the NewsObserver.com, the McCain campaign reacted to Obama’s remark by issuing the statement: “John McCain does not support amnesty or benefits for undocumented immigrants. He has consistently opposed giving amnesty or public benefits to undocumented immigrants.”

Obama, who tends to dismiss discussion of his pro-immigration positions as politically motivated “distractions,” has demonstrated no such reticence to expand entitlements for illegals. Specifically:


Obama’s plan for universal health care would include coverage for illegal immigrants, according to political strategist and Newsmax columnist Dick Morris. Morris has warned that covering illegals “adds dramatically” to the cost of universal health care.


In March, Obama voted to table a Senate amendment that would support the withdrawal of federal assistance “to sanctuary cities that ignore the immigration laws of the United States and create safe havens for illegal aliens and potential terrorists.” McCain did not cast a vote.


Obama supported the McCain-Kennedy immigration reform legislation that was defeated in 2006. Since then, McCain has taken the position that securing the borders must precede immigration reform. Obama continues to support a process to “bring people out of the shadows” and eventually obtain legal status (at which point they would be eligible for the federally mandated benefits available to anyone, such as Social Security). Obama also calls for enhanced border security.


The Democratic candidate for president supports, in principle, providing state-funded welfare benefits to legal immigrants. While a state senator, Obama supported allocating state funds to provide Medicaid coverage to some legal immigrants, according to OnTheIssues.org.


Obama has supported increasing the number of work visas issued each year, such as the H1-B visa, especially for applicants with specialized skills. According to OnTheIssues.org, Obama co-sponsored, along with New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, a bill that would provide federal funding to help states provide health care and education to non-U.S. citizens.


Obama strongly supports encouraging American children to become bilingual and, at one point in the campaign, appeared to suggest it should be mandatory. In June, he voted against a Senate provision that would declare English the national language of the United States. McCain voted for it.

Edward I. Nelson, the chairman of the nonprofit U.S. Border Control organization, warns that “Welfare and in-state tuition are powerful inducements to illegal immigration, as are free medical benefits.”

Nelson says his organization has awarded both Obama and McCain an “F” on their immigration and border control policies.

Gheen says Obama and McCain both would ultimately favor amnesty for illegals, albeit differently.

“Obama would give in-state tuition and driver’s licenses to illegal aliens, then make them legal,” Gheen says. “McCain would make them legal, and then give them in-state tuition and driver’s licenses.”

Wolf Blitzer asked Obama if he supported driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants. Obama answered: “Yes.”

Text

Nineteen terrorists infiltrate the U.S.

Thirteen get driver’s licenses.

The 9/11 plot depended on easy to get licenses.

Obama’s plan gives a license to any illegal who wants one.

A license they can use to get government benefits, a mortgage, board a plane, even illegally vote.

[Wolf Blitzer of CNN asks:] “Senator Obama, yes or no.”

[Obama responds:] “Yes.”

Barack Obama. Too radical. Too risky.

The National Republican Trust PAC is responsible for the content of this advertisement.

The driver’s license issue emerged in September 2007, when then-Gov. Eliot Spitzer ordered New York officials to grant driver’s licenses to illegals. During the Oct. 30, 2007, Democratic primary debate at Drexel University, Sen. Hillary Clinton fumbled a question from the late Tim Russert over whether she supported Spitzer’s plan. As for Obama, he has supported driver’s licenses for illegals since his days in the Illinois Senate, and continues to maintain that training illegals to drive, and insuring them, enhances public safety.


Fact: Obama also addressed the licensing of illegals during the October 2007 debate. Asked if he favored Spitzer’s plan, Obama replied: “I think that it is the right idea. And I disagree with [Sen.] Chris [Dodd], because there is a public safety concern. We can make sure that drivers who are illegal come out of the shadows, that they can be tracked, that they are properly trained, and that will make our roads safer. That doesn’t negate the need for us to reform illegal immigration.”

[Source: Debate transcript, Drexel University, Philadelphia, Pa., Oct. 30, 2007]

Fact: A full 77 percent of American adults oppose granting driver’s licenses to people who are in the United States illegally.

[Source: Rasmussen Reports, national telephone survey, November 2007]

Fact: There are 203 million licensed drivers in America, according to the Federal Highway Administration. Approximately 1 in 5 fatal car accidents involves a driver who, for whatever reason, does not have a valid driver’s license.

[Source: “Outrageous! Cracking Down on Illegal Drivers”
by Michael Crowley, Readers Digest, September 2008]

Fact: Sen. John McCain’s online policy statements do not specifically address driver’s licenses for illegals. McCain is on record, however, opposing any benefits for those who “have come here illegally and broke our laws.”

In one speech he pledged, “It would be among my highest priorities to secure our borders first, and only after we achieved widespread consensus that our borders are secure, would we address other aspects of the problem in a way that defends the rule of law and does not encourage another wave of illegal immigration.”

[Source: Feb. 7, 2008 speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference, CPAC]

Fact: In February, Obama told ABC’s David Muir, “If [McCain] wants to try to parse out this one issue of driver’s licenses, an issue of public safety, my response is that we have to solve the overall problem and this driver’s license issue is a distraction.”

[Source: “Obama Defends Illegals’ Driver’s Licenses,” ABC.com]

Fact: When he served as a member of the Illinois state Senate, Obama voted to train, insure, and license illegals to operate motor vehicles in order to “protect public safety.”

[Source: Debate transcript, Nov. 15, 2007, Las Vegas]

S.F City paid for flights for illegal youths dealing crack

The most liberal city by the bay San Francisco has managed to figure out another way to break the Law, citing the city's immigrant sanctuary status. You're not going hear any protest from OBama who favors immigrant sanctuary cities throughout the United States if you really want to know how your country will run once obama is elected then just look too San Francisco.


Feds probe S.F.'s migrant-offender shield
Jaxon Van Derbeken, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, June 29, 2008
San Francisco juvenile probation officials - citing the city's immigrant sanctuary status - are protecting Honduran youths caught dealing crack cocaine from possible federal deportation and have given some offenders a city-paid flight home with carte blanche to return.
The city's practices recently prompted a federal criminal investigation into whether San Francisco has been systematically circumventing U.S. immigration law, according to officials with knowledge of the matter.
City officials say they are trying to balance their obligations under federal and state law with local court orders and San Francisco's policies aimed at protecting the rights of the young immigrants, who they say are often victims of exploitation.
Federal authorities counter that drug kingpins are indeed exploiting the immigrants, but that the city's stance allows them to get away with "gaming the system."
San Francisco juvenile authorities have been grappling for several years with an influx of young Honduran immigrants dealing crack in the Mission District and Tenderloin.
Those who are arrested routinely say they are minors, but police suspect that many are actually adults, living communally in Oakland and other cities at the behest of drug traffickers who claim to be their relatives.
Nonetheless, city authorities have typically accepted the suspects' stories and handled the cases in Juvenile Court, where proceedings are often shielded from public scrutiny.
Unorthodox strategy
Barred by state law from sending drug offenders to the California Youth Authority and bound by a 1989 city law defining San Francisco as a sanctuary city for immigrants - meaning officials do not cooperate with federal immigration investigations - juvenile officials settled on an unorthodox strategy.
Rather than have the drug offenders deported, they have recommended that Juvenile Court judges and commissioners approve city-paid flights home to Honduras for the offenders with the aim of reuniting them with their families.
The practice, federal authorities say, does nothing to prevent offenders from coming back, while federal deportation legally bars them from ever returning. Federal officials also say U.S. law prohibits helping an illegal immigrant to cross the border, even if it is to return home.
Federal officials recently detained a San Francisco juvenile probation officer at the Houston airport, where he was accompanying two Honduran juvenile drug offenders about to board a flight to Tegucigalpa.
They questioned him for several hours before letting him go, and seized the youths and deported them.
"Our job is to uphold the nation's immigration laws," said Greg Palmore, spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). "Although San Francisco is a sanctuary city, it's a problem whenever someone attempts to evade the law. ... Our law does not allow us to turn a blind eye to any individual who has come into this country illegally."
Feds 'flabbergasted'
Joseph Russoniello, the U.S. attorney in charge of the San Francisco area, said he was "flabbergasted that the taxpayers' money was being spent for the purpose of ferrying detainees home. You have to have a perfect storm of dumb moves to have it happen."
William Siffermann, chief of San Francisco's Juvenile Probation Department, said federal agents have never specifically told his office not to send immigrants back to their home countries, but that he has stopped the practice until differences between the city and immigration authorities are resolved.
He said the city's stance is that it does not have to report illegal immigrant minors to the federal government, even if they are found in Juvenile Court to have committed a crime.
"We are not obligated to," he said. "We are abiding by the sanctuary city ordinance."
Siffermann added, "I don't believe we've done anything wrong." But he stressed that his office wants to make sure it is fulfilling its duties "in all arenas, with federal statutes, state statutes and the sanctuary city law."
Juveniles with beards
San Francisco police doubt that many of the young Hondurans they arrest on drug charges are even juveniles.
Police can report suspected adult illegal immigrants to federal authorities if they commit a crime, said Capt. Tim Hettrich, until recently the head of the narcotics unit.
So immigrant drug dealers "pass themselves off as juveniles, with a three-day growth of beard and everything else. It's frustrating," he said.
"Some of them have been arrested four or five times," Hettrich said. "That is one of the big problems with being a city of sanctuary."
He scoffed at San Francisco's strategy of returning the offenders to their home country. "They probably get the round trip and the next day, they will be right back here," Hettrich said.
Patricia Lee, head of the San Francisco public defender's juvenile branch, would not comment on pending cases. But, she said, "a lot of the young people have suffered a lot of abuse, abandonment and neglect in their native country and have been used as (drug-running) mules. There is lot of victimization and trafficking of these young people."
'Gaming the system'
Russoniello said the drug dealers are being sent here as part of an effort that takes advantage of San Francisco's leniency.
"What we're facing is a number of people gaming the system," he said. "Sooner or later the city will realize the advantage to cooperating (with federal authorities), whether it's the threat of criminal prosecution ... or some other method."
Russoniello would not confirm or deny the existence of a federal investigation, but juvenile probation officers connected to the case have been interviewed by federal agents about the flights.
City officials will not say how many juvenile drug offenders have been flown out of the country in recent years or how much the city has spent on the effort.
Federal immigration authorities stumbled on to the effort when they caught several illegal immigrants in December at the airport in Houston, along with a San Francisco juvenile probation officer.
The officer was on hand to make sure the immigrants boarded a plane to Tegucigalpa.
Federal authorities say they met with Siffermann and told him that any juvenile offender had to be handed over to immigration officials after completing his sentence.
The Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agency sent a letter to Siffermann on Dec. 17 stressing that it would soon "like to begin receiving referrals" about immigrant juveniles in custody in the city.
"The red flag was flown," Russoniello said.
City saw it differently
Siffermann, however, said federal authorities were not exactly clear about what the city could and could not do related to the flights or the status of immigrants held in juvenile cases.
"They did a little friendly stop-by," Siffermann said. "They said, 'This is something we would like you to cooperate on.' ... They said, 'Hey, look, this could be contrary to federal law, you might be in violation.' "
Meanwhile, the flights continued.
On May 15, two more illegal immigrants from Honduras were arrested in Houston, again accompanied by a San Francisco juvenile probation officer. Federal immigration authorities held the officer for more than three hours before releasing him.
Six days later, there was another meeting, Siffermann said. This time it was with a representative of Russoniello's office.
After that, Siffermann put the flights on hold. "We will look for other (approaches) for them," he said.
Siffermann stressed that the city ships out juvenile offenders to their home countries only after all other rehabilitative efforts have failed, including probation, foster care and juvenile detention.
The strategy is appropriate, Siffermann said, because deporting young offenders would doom them from ever becoming productive residents of the United States.
"It might prevent them from obtaining citizenship," he said, denying them a chance to "take a different course."
In a statement released by the city attorney's office, which is advising the city on the issue, spokesman Matt Dorsey said, "We've been in ongoing contact with the U.S. attorney's office on this, and we've informed them of our intention to address these issues in court proceedings.
"We're looking at the legal issues carefully and methodically," Dorsey's statement said, "and we're in the process of advising our client, the Juvenile Probation Department."
He said his office was not aware of the practice of flying juveniles back to Honduras.
Stranded juveniles
A recent count showed 22 of the 125 minors in custody at juvenile hall were immigrants and had no legal guardians in the United States, Siffermann said. He said his office is trying to figure out what to do with them now that flights are no longer an option.
Russoniello said the city has no choice but to comply with U.S. law and turn the youths over to federal authorities. "The alternative, now that they are all on notice, is a period of prolonged darkness," he said.
Judge Donna Hitchens, who oversees the city's Juvenile Court, said the original idea for flying youths home came from juvenile probation officials, and that it is up to them, not judges, to work out their differences with the federal government."We are only the judicial branch," she said. "The issue is between the city and ICE."