‘Loophole’ in Obama amnesty opens path to voting for some illegal aliens

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Secretaries of state in several U.S. states are cautioning the Obama administration that the president’s temporary deportation amnesty includes features that will make it difficult, if not impossible, to determine whether illegal aliens who attempt to register to vote are telling the truth about their eligibility.

Obama’s amnesty doesn’t offer a legal path for illegals to register to vote; that’s still against the law. But, according to state officials who testified last week before the House Oversight Committee, it essentially makes the process enforcement-proof, particularly when dealing with the large number of people targeted by the amnesty.

Here’s a portion of the testimony offered by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach:

On June I5, 2012, the Obama Administration unlawfully granted deferred action to approximately 1.8 million illegal aliens willing to claim that they entered the United States before the age of 16 (the “DACA Directive”). And on November 20, 2014, the Administration extended the same executive amnesty to another approximately 4 million illegal aliens. I describe these executive actions as ”unlawful” because the only two federal courts that have addressed the question both concluded that the President acted in violation of the law…

The Directives authorize U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to issue employment authorization documents to these amnesty recipients. The aliens can then use their employment documents to obtain driver’s licenses in any states. Whether or not a particular state will issue driver’s licenses to these aliens is a question of state law. In some states, such as Wisconsin, state law compels the department of motor vehicles to issue driver’s licenses to all deferred action recipients… In other states, namely those states within the Ninth Circuit (California, Arizona, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Alaska, and Hawaii), a flawed Ninth Circuit holding now compels those states to give driver’s licenses to DACA aliens if the state gives driver’s licenses to any other deferred action aliens… In a dozen other states, the state legislatures are considering bills that would make clear that recipients of this unlawful amnesty are not entitled to driver’s licenses in those states.

Where a deferred action alien is able to obtain a driver’s license, doing so allows the alien to easily satisfy one of the documentation requirements of the Help America Vote Act. However, even if the alien resides in a state that does not provide driver’s licenses to such aliens, the alien will still be able to obtain a Social Security Number, another acceptable form of identification. Provided that the alien is willing to sign the application stating that he is a U.S. citizen – something that occurs all the time either because the alien does not understand that he is declaring U.S. citizenship or because the alien is intentionally breaking the law – he will almost certainly become registered in one of the 46 states that do not require proof of citizenship. If the alien registers using the federal voter registration form in Kansas, Arizona, Georgia, or Alabama, he will succeed in registering to vote in federal elections (unless and until the U.S. Supreme Court grants a writ of certiorari to review the Tenth Circuit’s holding in Kobach v. Election Assistance Commission and reverses the court of appeals).

Ohio Secretary of State Husted said that election officials must have access to the names, birthdates and last four digits of each illegal alien’s Social Security number, “so they can cross-check that data with election rolls and reject non-citizen registrations,” according to of The Northeast Ohio Media Group’s Washington, D.C. Bureau.

But few Republicans at the Oversight hearing were optimistic about the possibilities of orchestrating such a feat on the scale the Obama amnesty would require.

Personal Liberty

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