Obama Also Issues “Ebola Amnesty”

Lost in the hoopla of President Obama’s enormous administrative amnesty affecting mostly Mexican and Central American illegal immigrants is that he also implemented a special protective order allowing people from Ebola nations to stay in the United States.

It’s amnesty on steroids! The special Ebola reprieve was issued separately—and quietly—via a Temporary Protected Status (TPS), a humanitarian program that’s supposed to be short-term. Instead, we’ve seen the provisional benefit grow into a continual U.S. residency plan for illegal aliens under both Republican and Democratic presidents. Besides those who have entered the U.S. illegally, TPS has also helped foreigners who have overstayed their visa permanently evade deportation. That makes the phrase “temporary” deceiving and somewhat of a joke.

It also means that we might as well add the African Ebola folks to the official amnesty bandwagon. For now, the administration is designating Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone for TPS for 18 months. That’s how it always starts—for a short period of time then it grows into years. Before you know it, illegal aliens who benefitted from TPS for humanitarian reasons are legal residents enjoying all the generous perks—free education, food stamps, medical care etc.—that Uncle Sam has to offer.

This scenario has been repeated over the years. In fact, just a few weeks ago the administration extended TPS for tens of thousands of Hondurans and Nicaraguans. The order was originally issued more than a decade and a half ago after a hurricane (Mitch) hit the Central American countries and has been renewed over and over again, illustrating that there’s nothing temporary about these reprieves. “There continues to be a substantial, but temporary, disruption of living conditions in Honduras (replace the word with Nicaragua) resulting from Hurricane Mitch, and Honduras remains unable, temporarily, to handle adequately the return of its nationals,” according to the government announcement posted to the federal register in mid-October.

Another recent example is the TPS the Obama administration gave to nearly 50,000 Haitians after the 2010 earthquake. In mid-2011 the president’s first Homeland Security Secretary, Janet Napolitano, renewed it through 2013 and when that temporary order expired the Haitian TPS got extended yet again until the end of January 2016. “The Secretary has determined that an extension is warranted because the conditions in Haiti that prompted the TPS designation continue to be met,” according to the latest extension announcement. “There continues to be a substantial, but temporary, disruption of living conditions in Haiti based upon extraordinary and temporary conditions in that country that prevent Haitians who have TPS from safely returning.”

This week’s TPS du jour was issued “due to the outbreak of Ebola virus disease in West Africa” and officially takes effect today, according to the government’s announcement. Besides nationals of Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone, it also covers “people without nationality who last habitually resided in one of those three countries,” the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) document states. Not only will these folks not be removed from the United States, the agency assures, they are authorized to work in this country like all other illegal immigrants benefiting from TPS.