Posted on 12/12/2014 12:47:26 PM PST by Kaslin
As the debate rages on Capitol Hill about how to defund President Obama's executive action that gives legal status to 5 million illegal immigrants, it's important to take a look at where the funding for his new amnesty program is coming from.
The funding for Obama's executive action is coming through the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, a fee, not tax based agency under the jurisdiction of Homeland Security. Because the USCIS is a fee based agency, many have argued Congress cannot defund it. According to the Congressional Research Service, Congress does in fact have the ability to defund the agency through the appropriations process.
A fee-funded agency or activity typically refers to one in which the amounts appropriated by Congress for that agency or activity are derived from fees collected from some external source. Importantly, amounts received as fees by federal agencies must still be appropriated by Congress to that agency in order to be available for obligation or expenditure by the agency. In some cases, this appropriation is provided through the annual appropriations process. In other instances, it is an appropriation that has been enacted independently of the annual appropriations process (such as a permanent appropriation in an authorizing act). In either case, the funds available to the agency through fee collections would be subject to the same potential restrictions imposed by Congress on the use of its appropriations as any other type of appropriated funds.
But lets put that aside for a minute. The larger question is, who is paying these fees? Millions of legal immigrants are paying these fees, which are now being reallocated by the executive branch to legalize millions of illegal immigrants who have been living in the United States for years while failing to go through proper and long established legal channels to obtain citizenship or other legal status. From the USCIS.gov website:
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is funded largely by application and petition fees. Recognizing that some applicants cannot pay the filing fees, USCIS established a fee waiver process for certain forms and benefit types. Demonstrated inability to pay is the only reason USCIS will approve a fee waiver.
Waiving a fee for one applicant transfers the cost of processing their application to other applicants through higher fees. Therefore, USCIS carefully considers the merits of each fee waiver request before making a decision.
If you are immigrating to the United States as a lawful permanent resident, you must pay the $165 USCIS Immigrant Fee, unless you meet one of the exemptions.
USCIS uses this fee to process and maintain your immigrant visa packet and to produce and deliver your Permanent Resident Card (commonly known as a Green Card).
Once you receive your immigrant visa packet from a U.S. embassy or consulate, we strongly encourage you to pay the fee before you depart for the United States.
You must pay the fee online, using USCIS ELIS, the USCIS Electronic Immigration System. We will send your Green Card to you after you pay the fee.
You can pay the fee after you immigrate. However, paying before you leave for the United States will help ensure that you receive your Green Card without delay and have been admitted to the U.S.
On average legal immigrants wait ten years to fully obtain citizenship (and only after they've had a green card for five years) and they must pay thousands of dollars to USCIS in the process. Again, that money is now being used to give millions of illegal immigrants a free, expedited pass to legal status. Adding insult to injury, millions of green cards for illegals means longer wait times for legal immigrants.
At current staffing levels, USCIS issues about 1 million green cards per year. And when Obama enacted his first executive amnesty, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals in 2012, wait times for legal immigrants to get their visas tripled from under five months to over 15 months.
Only about 1 million illegal immigrants were eligible to apply for DACA amnesty and only about 600,000 were given amnesty. Obama's next amnesty, however, will reportedly allow up to 5 million illegal immigrants to apply and no one knows how many will take him up on the offer.
But assuming the turnout for Obama's next amnesty is bigger than DACA, we can safely assume that legal immigration delays will get much much worse.
Meanwhile in case you missed it last week, USCIS issued a memo detailing the immediate opening of 1,000 permanent federal employee positions at a new operational facility that will open soon in Crystal City, Virginia.
Newly hired employees will be tasked with approving applications submitted by illegal immigrants taking advantage of President Obama's recently announced executive amnesty program.
“USCIS is taking steps to open a new operational center in Crystal City, a neighborhood in Arlington, Virginia, to accommodate about 1,000 full-time, permanent federal and contract employees in a variety of positions and grade levels. The initial workload will include cases filed as a result of the executive actions on immigration announced on Nov. 20, 2014. Many job opportunities at the operational center will be announced in the coming days and please continue to monitor USAJOBS if you are interested," the USCIS bulletin reads, urgently listing the availability of jobs in red.
These new government positions will no doubt come complete with generous benefits, i.e. retirement, healthcare, vacation, etc. courtesy of the American taxpayer. Further, based on the positions posted as available in the USCIS bulletin, many of them (the GS-13/14/15 positions shown above) are at the top of the government pay scale.
"Fairness."
Along with Jeb Bush & The Chamber Of Commerce Crowd:
IT’S AN ACT OF LOVE!
Katy you are a sharp cookie but the money is not his to do with as he pleases, or it wasn’t until Bonehead Boehner lied through his teeth to get this Marxist spending bill passed.
Were I a legal immigrant, I would file a class action lawsuit in order to have the apparently unnecessary fees I paid refunded. Of course, the emotional strain the process caused and the time spend on documents and travel back to my homeland would require monetary compensation as well.
In a blink, John Roberts can deem the "fee" as a "tax". Then, Congress can shut it off.
Can you say Criminal Conspiracy to Misappropriate Public Funds?
Sure you can. The GAO will be calling.
A fee-funded agency or activity typically refers to one in which the amounts appropriated by Congress for that agency or activity are derived from fees collected from some external source. Importantly, amounts received as fees by federal agencies must still be appropriated by Congress to that agency in order to be available for obligation or expenditure by the agency.
I have tried to explain this to people before when they say the Agency is “Self Funded”. There is NO SUCH THING. All Monies paid to ANY Federal Agency go to the US Treasury, CONgress appropriates NEW Money every year, a self funded agency only means they bring in as much as they spend at the end of the day. A Self Funded Agency can be cut off TOMORROW by CONgress.
If those who follow the law are forced to subsidize those who do not, the outcome will be obvious. Legal immigration will end, and only criminals will come here. That sounds like a big win for Obama and his corrupt crony capitalists.
[Note: I am a big fan of real capitalism and real profits; I just despise the thugs who use national socialist techniques instead of Adam Smith’s invisible hand to collect money.]
“...I have tried to explain this to people before...”
-
I would like to learn more about it.
Can you direct me to any reading on this?
It appears Congress surrendered their power of the purse long ago by allowing agencies to self-fund with fees.
Rand Paul's immigration speech...The Republican Party must embrace more legal immigration.[Posted on 03/19/2013 7:04:07 AM PDT by Perdogg]
Unfortunately, like many of the major debates in Washington, immigration has become a stalemate-where both sides are imprisoned by their own rhetoric or attachment to sacred cows that prevent the possibility of a balanced solution.
Immigration Reform will not occur until Conservative Republicans, like myself, become part of the solution. I am here today to begin that conversation.
Let's start that conversation by acknowledging we aren't going to deport 12 million illegal immigrants.
If you wish to work, if you wish to live and work in America, then we will find a place for you...
This is where prudence, compassion and thrift all point us toward the same goal: bringing these workers out of the shadows and into being taxpaying members of society.
Imagine 12 million people who are already here coming out of the shadows to become new taxpayers.12 million more people assimilating into society. 12 million more people being productive contributors.
Rand Paul calls on conservatives to embrace immigration reformLatinos, should be a natural constituency for the party, Paul argued, but "Republicans have pushed them away with harsh rhetoric over immigration." ...he would create a bipartisan panel to determine how many visas should be granted for workers already in the United States and those who might follow... [and the buried lead] "Imagine 12 million people who are already here coming out of the shadows to become new taxpayers...[Posted on 04/21/2013 1:52:42 PM PDT by SoConPubbie]
[but he's not in favor of amnesty, snicker, definition of is is]
moo chose grassy axe
Well that arrogant pos occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave thinks it is
Sounds right to me.
Fees, fines, and penalties collected by the IRS
don’t belong to the IRS.
Fees, fines, and penalties collected by the ATF
don’t belong to the ATF.
Fees, fines, and penalties collected by the EPA
don’t belong to the EPA.
Fees, fines, and penalties collected by OSHA
don’t belong to OSHA.
moral hazard
Executive order: has traitor Obama signed it yet, or is he going to use some legal trick to fool the public into believing that he actually signed it, when he really hasn’t? Sad. Sad. Sad.
Hmmmmm. A case for legal immigrants to file suit against Obama under equal protection of the 14th Amendment and the 5th Amendment.
I know that this probably doesn’t bother most here very much, since the fees are applied largely to (legal) aliens, but some USCIS fees are very high. I guess USCIS feels it can get away with charging whatever it want for services, since it’s (mostly) not US citizens who are paying them. Some of the fees have gone up radically in the last 10 years or so. This is just insult after injury for those who have jumped through the hoops and paid through the nose to get into the US legally.
This fee by non-elected federal bureaucrats is a major sidestepping of the Constitution’s Clause 1 of Section 7 of Aritcle I (1.7.1) imo, 1.7.1 being the “power of the purse” clause that James Madison wrote about in Federalist No. 58.
”The House of Representatives cannot only refuse, but they alone can propose, the supplies requisite for the support of government. They, in a word, hold the purse that powerful instrument by which we behold, in the history of the British Constitution, an infant and humble representation of the people gradually enlarging the sphere of its activity and importance, and finally reducing, as far as it seems to have wished, all the overgrown prerogatives of the other branches of the government. This power over the purse may, in fact, be regarded as the most complete and effectual weapon with which any constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the people, for obtaining a redress of every grievance, and for carrying into effect every just and salutary measure [emphasis added] …” —James Madison, The Federalist Papers : No. 58.
Just as with constitutionally indefensible Obamacare, and noting that 1.7.1 doesn’t specify a source of revenue, who cares if federal revenues are called a fee, a penalty or a tax? As Madison had indicated, 1.7.1 is the “emergency brake” that the House can use to redress the grievances of the voters, voters not supporting Obama’s constitutionally indefensible immigration policy in this case.
And speaking of constitutionally indefensible immigration policy, please consider the following. Politically correct interpretations of the Constitution's “Uniform Rule of Naturalization” clause (1.8.4) and slavery clause (1.9.1) aside, interpretations used to wrongly justify federal immigration laws, the states have never delegated to the feds, expressly via the Constitution, the specific power to regulate immigration. This evidenced by the excerpts below from the writings of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, Madison generally regarded as the father of the Constitution.
“4. _Resolved_, That alien friends are under the jurisdiction and protection of the laws of the State wherein they are: that no power over them has been delegated to the United States, nor prohibited to the individual States, distinct from their power over citizens. And it being true as a general principle, and one of the amendments to the Constitution having also declared, that “the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people,” the act of the Congress of the United States, passed on the — day of July, 1798, intituled “An Act concerning aliens,” which assumes powers over alien friends, not delegated by the Constitution, is not law, but is altogether void, and of no force [emphasis added].” —Thomas Jefferson, Draft of the Kentucky Resolutions - October 1798.
"That the General Assembly doth particularly protest against the palpable and alarming infractions of the Constitution, in the two late cases of the "Alien and Sedition Acts" passed at the last session of Congress; the first of which exercises a power no where delegated to the federal government, ...
…
… the General Assembly doth solemenly appeal to the like dispositions of the other states, in confidence that they will concur with this commonwealth in declaring, as it does hereby declare, that the acts aforesaid, are unconstitutional; and that the necessary and proper measures will be taken by each, for co-operating with this state, in maintaining the Authorities, Rights, and Liberties, referred to the States respectively, or to the people [emphasis added]. ”— James Madison, Draft of the Virginia Resolutions - December 1798.
So as evidenced by Obama’s constitutionally indefensible Stimulus Program and likewise indefensible Obamacare, the corrupt House, this time controlled by RINOs, is once again helping Obama to act independently of Congress. It is doing so this time by not only wrongly front-ending federal appropriations by hiding behind a constitutionally undefined federal agency exercising constitutionally nonexistent federal government powers, but also passing a spending bill which undoubtedly ignores Congress’s Article I, Section 8-limited powers, not that doing so is a major issue with lawless Obama.
Finally, I hope that patriots are also beginning to see serious problems with the ill-conceived 17th Amendment, a state legislatures-controlled Senate arguably killing the Cromnibus bill.
What a mess! :^(
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