President Obama’s Quest to Transform the American Electorate

President Obama’s Quest to Transform the American Electorate

Overview


NOTE: This piece was posted in 2016.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

–   OVERVIEW

1. CHANGING THE AMERICAN ELECTORATE VIA IMMIGRATION POLICY


2. CHANGING THE AMERICAN ELECTORATE VIA REFUGEE RESETTLEMENT POLICY


3. CHANGING THE AMERICAN ELECTORATE VIA HOUSING & ZONING POLICIES


4. CHANGING THE AMERICAN ELECTORATE VIA ELECTION LAWS


5. CHANGING THE AMERICAN ELECTORATE VIA POLITICAL ACTIVISM

6. CHANGING THE AMERICAN ELECTORATE VIA CRIMINAL-JUSTICE REFORM

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OVERVIEW

A Multi-Pronged Approach

* In his effort to fundamentally transform the United States, President Obama are aggressively striving to turn the American electorate into a solidly Democratic voting bloc for generations to come. He and his administration have pursued this goal on several fronts: (1) Immigration Policy, (2) Refugee Resettlement Policy, (3) Housing and Zoning Policies, (4) Election Laws, and (5) Political Activism.

1. CHANGING THE AMERICAN ELECTORATE VIA IMMIGRATION POLICY

Illegal Immigrants Are Natural Democrats

* Numerous studies of political attitudes show that illegal immigrants favor Democrats over Republicans by a huge margin, and that their American-born children (the second generation of these families in the U.S.) become Democrats in overwhelming numbers. They favor big-government policies like nationalized (single-payer) medical care and the massive expansion of welfare and other entitlement programs. Thus the Democratic Party constantly seeks ways to fast-track their path-to-citizenship and right-to-vote. As Center for Immigration Studies executive director Mark Krikorian puts it, “Obama is transforming America through immigration.”

Advocating the DREAM Act and Comprehensive Immigration Reform

* Obama and the Democrats have long advocated passage of the DREAM Act, legislation designed to create a path-to-citizenship for illegal immigrants who first came to the United States as minors and are still younger than 35. But no Congress has ever passed such a bill via the legislative process.

* Obama and the Democrats have also sought for years to pass “comprehensive immigration reform” that would provide a path-to-citizenship for most, if not all, of the many millions of immigrants living illegally in the United States, regardless of their age.

Obama’s Executive Order Enacts Aspects of the DREAM Act

* On June 15, 2012, President Obama issued an executive order enacting his Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which essentially put into effect various aspects of the DREAM Act. Specifically, the DACA order gave lawful permanent residency status and work authorization to anyone who: (a) had arrived in America illegally as a minor; (b) had lived in the U.S. for at least five years; (c) was either a current student or a high-school graduate; or (d) had served in the military and was not yet 35 years old.

  • With this executive order, Obama did precisely what he had said, numerous times, that he had no constitutional authority to do. For example, in a July 2011 speech to the National Council of La Raza, the president stated: “Now, I know some people want me to bypass Congress and change the laws on my own. Believe me, the idea of doing things on my own is very tempting. I promise you. Not just on immigration reform. But that’s not how our system works. That’s not how our democracy functions. That’s not how our Constitution is written.”

More Obama Directives Expanding the Rights and Protections of Illegals

* On December 21, 2012, Obama, through his Department of Homeland Security (DHS), issued a directive stating that almost all immigration offenses were “unenforceable absent a separate criminal conviction.”

* On August 23, 2013, the Obama DHS issued a directive “expanding [DACA] amnesty to illegal immigrant relatives of DREAM Act beneficiaries.”

The Massive “Children’s Crusade” from Central America

* The foregoing measures by Obama clearly signaled that the administration had no intention of enforcing the nation’s immigration laws. As a result, a massive wave of poor, illiterate minors—originating mainly from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador—began illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border into the southern United States in unprecedented numbers. In stark contrast to the roughly 6,000 young people who had been apprehended by border personnel in 2011, government officials now estimated that the corresponding totals would exceed 90,000 in 2014 and 140,000 in 2015. None of these figures included the many tens of thousands more who had avoided, and who would avoid, apprehension.

* U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen of Brownsville, Texas, observed bluntly: “[The government] has simply chosen not to enforce the United States’ border security laws.”

* None of the negative ramifications (enumerated below) of this influx of illegals mattered to the Obama administration, whose chief objective was to import, by any means necessary, as many future Democrats as possible.

* On June 6, 2014, the Obama administration announced that it would be paying many millions of dollars to approximately 100 American lawyers tasked with helping young illegal immigrants—a rapidly growing demographic—to settle in the United States. Attorney General Eric Holder said that these attorneys—dubbed “Justice AmericaCorps”—would “protect the rights of the most vulnerable members of society … particularly young people who must appear in immigration proceedings.”

* Obama’s decision to allow this massive influx of illegal border-crossers was a strategy designed to flood the United States with young people whose grim circumstances would make them politically impossible to deport. In this way, the president could take yet another step in moving the political leanings of the U.S. population leftward by the sheer force of numbers. A statement released by the National Association of Former Border Patrol Officers said: “This is not a humanitarian crisis. It is a predictable, orchestrated and contrived assault on the compassionate side of Americans by her political leaders that knowingly puts minor illegal alien children at risk for purely political purposes. Certainly, we are not gullible enough to believe that thousands of unaccompanied minor Central American children came to America without the encouragement, aid and assistance of the United States government.”

* Along the same lines, Rep. Louis Gohmert (R-Texas) told radio host Steve Malzberg that Obama’s motivation for allowing illegals to swarm across the border was as follows: “In the end they have said they want to turn Texas blue, they want to turn America blue. And if you bring in hundreds of thousands or millions of people and give them the ability to vote, and tell them … ‘if you want to keep getting the benefits you have to go vote’ … that drives people to vote and it would ensure Republicans will never get elected again.”

* The Daily Mail reported that many of the young people entering the U.S. illegally were violent gang members: “Border Patrol agents overwhelmed by a recent influx of immigrant children crossing the border illegally have been knowingly letting gang members enter the country. Art Del Cueto, president of the National Border Patrol Council Local 2544 in Tucson, Arizona told the National Review that officers who recognize gang tattoos on the minors are supposed to treat them like everyone else. For the most part, that means letting these unaccompanied children be reunited with their parents or other relatives already living in the United States.”

* Chris Cabrera, vice president of the National Board Patrol Council Local 3307, described the brazen fearlessness exhibited by many of the illegals: “I’ve heard people come in and say, ‘You’re going to let me go, just like you let my mother go, just like you let my sister go. You’re going to let me go as well, and the government’s going to take care of us.’”

* Various communicable diseases—including tuberculosis, measles, scabies, lice, dengue fever, and leprosy—were widespread among the border-crossers.

* The Obama administration relocated thousands of these illegal minors to various cities and towns across the United States, without first informing state or local authorities in those places, and without publicly revealing where those places were.

* On July 5, 2014, the Daily Caller reported: “The vast majority of 50,000 unaccompanied youths and children who have illegally crossed the Texas border during the last few months have been successfully delivered by federal agencies to their relatives living in the United States, according to a New York Times article. A second New York Times [piece] revealed that officials have caught an additional 240,000 Central American migrants since April, and are transporting many of them to their destinations throughout the United States. The 290,000 illegals—so far—are exploiting legal loopholes that allow them to get temporary permits to stay in the United States.”

* Many of the youngsters were traveling alone in search of their parents who were already in the U.S. illegally. In many cases, the children’s parents had paid thousands of dollars to “polleros”—a Spanish term meaning “chicken herders”—to smuggle their children through the Rio Grande crossing. “Some of that money,” reported The Blaze.com, “is then paid to the drug cartels, mainly the Gulf Cartel, which controls the territory on the Mexican side of the river.”

* When questioned by Border Patrol agents, the children and adults alike consistently responded with identical, obviously rehearsed answers. Specifically, they cited a fear that if they were to return to their homelands, they would be harmed or killed by violent gangs. “It’s something they’re all saying and it’s obvious that it is well-rehearsed and it is a consistent story,” said Rio Grande Valley sector Border Patrol agent Albert Spratte. “We can’t even get them to answer their name before they tell us the gangs were the reason they fled their country.”

* It was common knowledge among the border crossers that their relatives and friends who had already entered the U.S. illegally, had each received a document ordering them “to appear in court” within 90 days, and that this document had allowed them safe passage throughout the country. But virtually none of the illegals ever reported to a court at any time thereafter. Most of them simply disappeared into existing immigrant communities, without fear of deportation. “They have heard that anybody who crosses into the United States can stay,” said one Border Patrol agent at the site of the chaotic influx of illegals. “So they keep coming.”

* Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson, meanwhile, emphasized that the U.S. would continue exempting young people from America’s immigration laws: “[A]lmost all of us agree that a child who crossed our border illegally with a parent, or in search of a parent or a better life, was not making an adult choice to break our laws and should be treated differently than adult law-breakers.”

* Notwithstanding the high unemployment rate (about 20%) among American young adults without high-school diplomas, Johnson announced that 560,000 illegal immigrants would soon be given formal work authorization in the United States. Meanwhile, the Obama Labor Department had recently authorized the admission of an additional 100,000 guest workers.

* By July 2014, the National Border Patrol Council (NBPC) was reporting that the illegal alien minors from Central America were being permitted to board U.S. passenger jets without having any identification; the only papers they needed to show airline employees were their Notice to Appear forms—simple printouts with no photo or security features. Hector Garza, the spokesman for one of the NBPC’s branches, explained: “This is not the CBP [Customs and Border Protection] or another federal agency renting or leasing an aircraft, these are the same planes that the American public uses for domestic travel…. Not only are we releasing unknown illegal aliens onto American streets, but we are allowing them to travel commercially using paperwork that could easily be reproduced or manipulated on any home computer…. We do not know who these people are … We know nothing about most of them, ICE releases them into the American public, and now they are boarding aircraft at will with a simple paper document.”

* Garza also reported: “Approximately 70 percent of the border patrol agents have been reassigned for administrative duties including processing of aliens, transporting aliens, and … leaving a porous border in the country.”

* In 2013, some 36,000 convicted criminal aliens apprehended in the U.S. were released; another 80,000 criminal aliens encountered by ICE agents were never placed into deportation proceedings. As of November 2014, some 167,000 criminal aliens who had been ordered deported were still at large, as were 341,000 criminal aliens released by ICE without deportation orders.

Obama Administration Falsely Claims to Have Been Surprised by the Sudden Influx of Unaccompanied Illegal Minors

* The Obama administration claimed to have been surprised by the wave of Central American children flooding across the southern U.S. border. But this claim is contradicted by the fact that on January 29, 2014—less than five months prior to the height of the crisis—the federal government had posted an advertisement seeking bids for a vendor contract to handle 65,000 “Unaccompanied Alien Children.” That figure is highly significant, in light of the fact that the highest number (of unaccompanied alien minors) ever previously encountered in a given year was 5,000.

Obama Takes Another Executive Action on Immigration

* On November 20, 2014, President Obama delivered a televised address to the nation announcing the elements of his new executive order on immigration—Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA). Much like DACA, this executive order usurped, for the executive branch of government, the legislative authority of Congress and was expected to affect some 5 million illegal immigrants. Specifically, the president said that the U.S. would not seek to deport any illegal immigrants who “[have] been in America more than five years”; who “have children who are American citizens or legal residents”; and who could “pass a criminal background check and [be] willing to pay [their] fair share of taxes.” Asked Obama: “Are we a nation that accepts the cruelty of ripping children from their parents’ arms? Or are we a nation that values families, and works to keep them together?”

How Much Obama’s Immigration Executive Orders Will Cost American Taxpayers

* According to Heritage Foundation budget analyst Robert Rector, President Obama’s executive orders legalizing several million immigrants would cost American taxpayers approximately $2 trillion, or roughly $40 billion a year, over the course of the next five decades. As the Daily Caller reported: “The $2 trillion cost is driven by the federal government’s support for all poor people, says Robert Rector … [who] explained that, on average, the illegal immigrants benefiting from the amnesty have a 10th grade education. That low education ensures they can’t earn enough money, or pay enough taxes, to pay for the many benefits they’ll get if they progress from temporary residents to legal residents and then to citizens, Rector said. These various benefits add up to roughly $50,000 a year for each household, but those households can and do pay only about $13,000 a year in federal taxes, leaving a gap of roughly $40,000 between payments and benefits, Rector said.”

Illegals Affected by Obama’s Executive Action Will Be Eligible for Federal Benefits

* On January 16, 2015, it was reported that according to estimates by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), by 2017 approximately 2 million of the illegal immigrants affected by Obama’s latest executive action would become eligible for certain federal benefits due to their new status and work authorizations. Said the CBO report: “Those who are approved for deferred action are considered lawfully present in the country but do not gain legal status. They can, and most do, receive authorization to work. Because they are lawfully present during the period of their deferred status, they are eligible to receive Medicare and Social Security benefits if they meet the programs’ requirements…. In addition, those individuals who are approved for deferred action and receive work authorization have Social Security numbers and therefore can claim the earned income tax credit if they qualify.”

Under Obama’s Executive Amnesty, Illegal Aliens in Prison Are Released and Made Eligible for Work Permits

* In January 2015, a new report from the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) indicated that under President Obama’s executive amnesty, certain illegal aliens were being released from detention facilities and made eligible for work permits. Said the report: “Starting almost immediately after the president’s announcement in November, ICE offices around the country were directed to go through their caseload of illegal aliens in the process of being deported and start releasing all those who by the stroke of the president’s pen were no longer priorities for enforcement. And, under current policy, many of these illegal aliens—many of whom have criminal records and/or prior deportations—are getting work permits too.”

* Between Obama’s November 2014 announcement of his executive amnesty and the end of that year, ICE released more than 600 detained immigrants from custody. That number included detainees who appeared to qualify for DACA or DAPA, as well as individuals whose case histories no longer fell within the range of DHS’s (new) enforcement priorities.

* The CIS report added: “These aren’t even necessarily people with family, kids, ties or equities in the United States. This directive/policy toward ‘non-priorities’ applies to anyone simply in the United States as of January 1, 2014 with no significant criminal convictions. Yet even if they were ordered deported by a court and are actually in custody, awaiting removal, per this order, we now cannot execute that order or detain them, as a ‘non-priority.’ And yes, many will qualify in some way for work permits …”

Obama’s Executive Action on Deportation Makes It Easier for Illegal Immigrants to Vote

* Testifying before Congress on February 12, 2015, state election officials said that President Obama’s latest executive action on deportation—by which illegal immigrants would be granted driver’s licenses and Social Security numbers—would make it easier for illegals to improperly register and vote in elections. While noting that it would still be unlawful for non-citizens to vote, Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach said that they simply did not have the tools necessary to locate and identify illegals who might register anyway. As Husted explained, mass registration drives often overwhelm the capacity of authorities—whose offices have limited manpower—to verify the citizenship status of all registrants and voters. According to the Washington Times, Kobach “said [that] even some motor vehicle bureau workers automatically ask customers if they want to register to vote, which some non-citizens in the past have cited as their reason for breaking the law to register…. It’s a guarantee [this] will happen.”

Obama’s Plan to Turn Immigrants into a “Country Within a Country,” and to Discourage Assimilation

In early 2015, Sue Payne, a contributor to WCBM Radio, was invited to listen in to three Obama administration conference calls about immigration, where the participants included representatives from each of the White House’s 16 cabinet departments. Below is Ms. Payne’s verbatim account of what she heard in those conference calls — as she told it to radio broadcaster Mark Levin on February 26, 2015. (To hear the audio of this interview, click here, then click on “2/26/15,” and begin listening at approximately the 91:00 mark.)

“[W]hat took place on the call was there was the Task Force on New Americans, which Obama established on November 21st, remember, when he went to Las Vegas. The media said he was signing an executive order for 5 million illegal aliens to become deferred. In reality, what he did was sign a memorandum that created the Task Force on New Americans, which was going to implement his amnesty mill for the 5 million illegals, which I believe is going to be more than that. I think he was planning, and on these conference calls it became clear, that he’s looking at 13 to 15 million to get protection and move them on to citizenship.

“What happened in the conference calls was there was a representative from 16 – each of the members of his Cabinet. So there were 16 representatives there. And Cecilia Munoz [former policy director for the National Council of La Raza, and former Obama appointee as director of the U.S. Domestic Policy Council] was on the first call…. And she’s chairing this Task Force. And so what became clear is that once these illegals come out of the shadows, so to speak, their communities that they’re living in now are going to be redesignated as “Receiving Communities.” And what this Task Force is designed to do, is to create a welcoming feeling among these Receiving Communities, to bring in these immigrants, bring them out in the open.

“But the Receiving Communities will then soon morph into what was established [as] an Emerging Immigrant Community. And to do that, what they said was we need to start looking at the immigrant as a seedling. And for the seedling to grow, the seedling needs to be in fertile soil…. [E]ventually the seedlings will take over the host. And the immigrants will come out of the shadows, and what I got from the meetings was they would be pushing the citizens into the shadows. They would be taking over the country. In fact one of the members of the Task Force actually said that we would be developing a country within a country.

“There was a couple of buzzwords that were really disturbing to hear. That was one of them. One was from a White House spokesman [who] said that immigrants need to be aware of the benefits they are entitled to. Which led to another comment saying that this group that Obama’s going to pardon or give amnesty to, would not be interested in assimilating They would navigate, not assimilate.… [I]t became very clear the Receiving Communities would be morphing into the Emergent Immigrant Communities.

“There was also a couple of other things that were very disturbing. One was that as soon as this decision is pushed through, these immigrants need to be treated as refugees. They need to be given cash. They need medical care. They need to use credit cards to pay for any documents that they need. And also, we need to convince state and local governments to cut these people no-interest loans with taxpayer dollars, so they can then pay for their papers. As if we were funding our own destruction here.…

“Also, they said there was going to be a great deal of older immigrants in this batch, and that we needed to make sure that the receiving communities knew that the older or elderly unskilled can contribute to these receiving communities, and that the government should understand that immigrants need to age successfully. Immigrants and successful aging. And we need to get them into Social Security as soon as possible, so that they can age successfully within their “country within a country.”


Massive Effort to Turn Immigrants into New Democrat Voters

In April 2015, former DOJ official J. Christian Adams reported that the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS), in conjunction with the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Task Force on New Americans (TFNA), was “reallocating significant resources away from a computer system — the ‘Electronic Immigration System‘ — to sending letters to all 9,000,000 green card holders urging them to naturalize prior to the 2016 election.” DFNA director and co-chair Leon Rodriguez, who contributedheavily to the radicalization of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division under Eric Holder, had recently penned a letter that referenced a White House report called “Strengthening Communities by Welcoming All Residents.” Said Rodriguez’s letter: “This report outlines an immigrant integration plan that will advance our nation’s global competitiveness and ensure that the people who live in this country can fully participate in their communities.”

According to Adams: “’Full participation’ is a term commonly used to include voting rights. To that end, resources within DHS have been redirected toward pushing as many as aliens and non-citizens as possible to full citizenship status so they may ‘fully participate’ in the 2016 presidential election. For example, the internal DHS letter states one aim is to ‘strengthen existing pathways to naturalization and promote civic engagement.’”

Given that immigrants from minority communities tend to vote overwhelmingly for Democrat candidates, the naturalization of millions of them would have profound implications for the future of American politics.

Adams also noted that DHS was “not only rushing green card holders toward citizenship before the next election, but also jamming previous visa holders toward green card status.”

The Demographics of America’s Illegal Immigrant Population, and the Implications

* As of 2012, about 58.8% of the immigrants in the United States illegally were from Mexico, followed by El Salvador (6%), Guatemala (4.9%), Honduras (3.1%), Philippines (2.7%), India (2.2%), Korea (2.0%), China (1.8%), Ecuador (1.5%), and Vietnam (1.4%).

* The great majority of these immigrants are poor, uneducated, and low-skilled—precisely the types of people most likely to need and use government-provided welfare and social-service programs. Indeed, even legalimmigrants from these same countries are already much more likely than native-born Americans to be in or near poverty, and to be dependent upon welfare and social-service benefits. And these are the types of immigrants whom the Democratic Party desires, given their propensity for voting Democrat in overwhelming numbers.

Targeting the South vis à vis the Enforcement of Immigration Laws

* Because the South for years has been dominated by Republicans, the Obama administration and its Democrat allies have sought to prevent southern states from enforcing immigration laws and election laws.

  • Obama Sues Arizona over the Enforcement of Immigration LawIn July 2010, the Obama administration sued the state of Arizona over SB-1070, a state law that mirrored longstanding U.S. federal law that the Obama administration was refusing to enforce. Specifically, the Arizona statute: (a) deputized state police to check with federal authorities on the immigration status of criminal suspects whose behavior or circumstances seemed to indicate that they might be in the United States illegally; (b) included provisions explicitly banning racial profiling; and (c) required state residents to carry ID or immigration-registration documents at all times—a provision consistent with longstanding federal law pertaining to non-citizens.
  • Obama Sues Alabama over the Enforcement of Immigration LawIn August 2011, the Obama administration sued the state of Alabama over HB-56, a recently passed immigration law that: (a) required Alabama police to try to determine a detainee’s immigration status if there was “reasonable suspicion” that he was in the U.S. illegally; (b) barred illegal immigrants from receiving public benefits or attending publicly owned colleges; (c) prohibited the transporting or harboring of illegal immigrants; (d) forbade employers from knowingly hiring illegals; (e) criminalized the production of false identification documents; and (f) required voters to provide proof-of-citizenship when registering.
  • Obama Sues South Carolina over the Enforcement of Immigration LawIn November 2011, the Obama administration sued the state of South Carolina for its efforts to enforce the federal immigration laws that the Obama administration had resolved not to enforce. Said a spokesman for Governor Nikki Haley: “If the feds were doing their job, we wouldn’t have had to address illegal immigration reform at the state level. But, until they do, we’re going to keep fighting in South Carolina to be able to enforce our laws.”

* These Volags play a major role in deciding where refugee newcomers to the U.S. will be sent to live.

Promoting Immigration from the Middle East

Approximately 100,000 immigrants from 43 predominantly Muslim countries now come to the U.S. legally each year. Moreover, in the 2013-14 school year, some 127,332 student visas were granted to individuals from those same countries.

* Large numbers of Muslim immigrants are desirable to Obama and his party, because Muslims support Democrats over Republicans by a 69% to 15%margin.

Push to Create 8.8 Million New Citizens Before Election Day

On September 17, 2015, the Obama administration announced a new campaign to get the 8.8 million legal, non-citizen immigrants in the United States (of whom 5.4 million were Latino) onto U.S. citizenship rolls prior to election day 2016. Reported WorldNetDaily:

“Specifically, the Obama administration is pressing for the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services to make it easier for the legals to pass the test, the New York Times reported. The agency is going to provide practice tests via cellphone, as well as hold study and preparatory workshops in key spots around the country. The fee to take the citizenship tests will remain at $680, but can be paid by credit card, the newspaper said. Team Obama has reached out to regional immigration groups for assistance with the more than 70 workshops that have been organized, the New York Times said. The administration’s also planned about 200 naturalization events [for more than 36,000 new citizens] in the next week. But that’s not all. The White House is embracing a plan to make immigrants feel welcome, in part by adjusting Justice Department rules so that those who want to help with the citizenship process can get their credentials quicker.”

On September 23, 2015, author Michelle Malkin noted that as part of this plan: (a) the Obama administration was providing new “customer service enhancements” so that “naturalization applicants will be able to use credit cards” to pay their $595 naturalization fees and $85 biometric fees; (b) the Department of Homeland Security had formed a new partnership with the Department of Agriculture “to provide temporary office space to USCIS” (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) and to “provide services [including biometrics collection, case interviews and information presentations] to communities with significant numbers of immigrants who are not located near a USCIS office”; (c) the federal government had developed “new interactive practice civics tests” for the prospective applicants, initially “in English … with other languages to follow” soon thereafter; and (d) the Obama White House had given $10 million in taxpayer money to 40 left-wing organizations in 26 states to facilitate the citizenship drive.

Obama’s Rush to Naturalize Immigrants Before the 2016 Elections

On September 22, 2016, the Washington Times reported:

“The Homeland Security Department is granting as many citizenship applications as it can to try to sway participation in this year’s presidential election, an internal department document shows.

“An email obtained by Senate Republicans shows a Texas immigration office demanded volunteers to work weekends, hoping to get as many people onto the citizenship rolls as possible before the end of September — which would give them enough time to register to vote in November.

“Democrats and immigration groups had launched a drive to try to get eligible immigrants to become citizens in time to vote against Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. The advocates fell well short of their goal of registering 1 million citizens, but the 600,000 they [did] get to sign up by June have created a massive backlog that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is now working through.

“The memo from a branch chief at the USCIS Houston field office said in the July memo that the goal was to get as many applications approved as possible ‘due to the election year.’”

2. CHANGING THE AMERICAN ELECTORATE VIA REFUGEE RESETTLEMENT POLICY

The Federal Refugee Resettlement Program

The Refugee Act of 1980, which was sponsored by Senator Ted Kennedy and signed into law by President Jimmy Carter, created the Federal Refugee Resettlement Program (FRRP) which was designed to: (a) make available sufficient resources for the employment training and placement of refugees;(b) provide refugees with the opportunity to acquire sufficient English language training; (c) ensure that cash assistance was made available to refugees; and (d) ensure that women were given the same opportunities as men to participate in training and instruction.

* Through this FRRP, tens of thousands of refugees today are funneled into the United States via taxpayer-funded programs run by liberal churches and pseudo-religious organizations acting as Voluntary Agencies—“Volags,” for short. These Volags provide a religious justification for what essentially amounts to the colonization of the United States with Third World refugees. There are 9 main Volags currently in operation:

  • US Conference of Catholic Bishops
  • Lutheran Immigrant Aid Society
  • International Rescue Committee
  • World Relief Corporation
  • Immigrant and Refugee Services of America
  • Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society
  • Church World Service
  • Domestic and Foreign Missionary Service of the Episcopal Church of the USA
  • Ethiopian Community Development Center

* Decisions regarding refugee placement are made without consulting political and community leaders who live and work in those locales. According to a July 2012 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, “most public entities such as public schools and health departments generally said that voluntary agencies notified them of the number of refugees expected to arrive in the coming year, but did not consult them regarding the number of refugees they could serve.”

* The same GAO report quotes a state official saying “that local affiliate funding is based on the number of refugees they serve, so affiliates (private,taxpayer-funded contractors) have an incentive to maintain or increase the number of refugees they resettle each year rather than allowing the number to decrease.” As the website Refugee Resettlement Watch puts it: “Refugee resettlement is a self-perpetuating global enterprise. Staff and management of the hundreds of taxpayer-supported U.S. contractors are largely refugees or immigrants whose purpose is to gain entry for more refugees, usually for their co-ethnics.”

* David Robinson, a former acting director of the State Department’s refugee bureau, reports that “the federal government provides about ninety percent of [refugee contractors’] collective budget,” and that their lobbying umbrella “wields enormous influence over the [Obama] Administration’s refugee admissions policy. It lobbies the Hill effectively to increase the number of refugees admitted for permanent resettlement each year…. If there is a conflict of interest, it is never mentioned…. The solution its members offer to every refugee crisis is simplistic and the same: increase the number of admissions to the United States without regard to budgets…”

* “Despite their rhetoric, refugee agencies have steadfastly refused to use their own resources to maintain the U.S. refugee resettlement program [FRRP]. Public money has thoroughly driven out private money. A program known as the Private Sector Initiative allowed sponsoring agencies to bring over refugees if the agencies were willing to cover costs of resettlement and support. It was discontinued for lack of use in the mid-1990s. Today the agencies are on record as opposed to diverting more federal refugee dollars to overseas refugee assistance (where each dollar will go further in helping refugees) because it might mean fewer dollars for them!” – Refugee Resettlement Watch

Numbers of Refugees to America

* Between 1975, and 2015, the U.S. resettled more than 3 million refugees, ranging from a high of 207,000 in 1980 to a low of 27,110 in 2002 (in the aftermath of 9/11). The average number of refugees admitted annually since 1980 has been approximately 98,000. Additionally, in recent years another 40,000 or more have come to the U.S. annually as asylum seekers and Cuban/Haitian entrants—all with the same rights and entitlements as refugees. Because of chain migration, these original admission numbers have multipliedfourfold or more.

* The United States takes more than twice as many refugees as all countries from the rest of the industrialized world combined.

Characteristics of Refugees to America

* In 2014, the number one language spoken by refugees admitted to the United States was Arabic, followed by Nepali, Karen, Somali, Spanish, Chaldean, Burmese, Armenian, and Kayah.

* Almost twice as many Somalis as Spanish-speakers were admitted to the U.S. as refugees in 2014.

* The vast majority of refugees from the Muslim world are Sunni Muslims, the same sect that birthed Al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, and ISIS. In one typical month, the U.S. took in, from the Middle East: 437 Sunni Muslims from Syria, 47 Christians, 1 Catholic, and 1 Yazidi.

* In 2012 the countries that sent the most refugees to the U.S. were, in descending order of numbers sent: Bhutan, Burma, Iraq, Somalia, Cuba, Dem. Rep. Congo, Iran, Eritrea, Sudan.

* On February 17, 2015, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki announced that in light of the unrest and terrorism plaguing the nation of Syria, the U.S. would increase the number of Syrian refugees permitted to come to America in 2015 and 2016: “The United States has admitted 524 Syrians since 2011. We’re likely to admit 1,000 to 2,000 Syrian refugees for permanent resettlement in Fiscal Year 2015 and a somewhat higher number, though still in the low thousands, in Fiscal Year 2016.” According to a WorldNetDaily report, Michael Steinbach, deputy assistant director of the FBI’s counter terrorism unit, “has admitted the United States is finding it virtually impossible to screen out terrorists that could be hiding among the thousands of Syrian ‘refugees’ heading soon to American cities.”

* “Membership in a U.S.-registered Islamic terrorist group is not a bar to entry on the program as long as the refugee was not a ‘direct participant’ in ‘terrorist’ activity.” – Refugee Resettlement Watch

* Until the late 1990s, the U.S. picked most of the refugees approved for resettlement within its borders. But in more recent years, up to 95% of refugees to the U.S. have either been: (a) referred by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), or (b) the relatives of UN-picked refugees. In other words, the United Nations is effectively dictating American refugee policy.

* Refugee Resettlement Watch explains the reason for that: “One of the operative assumptions of those in the refugee industry is that, since the U.S. is behind most of the chaos in the world,… it is morally obligated to take the lead in resettling the world’s refugees.”

* “Refugees are not tested for many diseases, such as HIV. Refugees are a major contributing factor to TB rates among the foreign-born. TB among the foreign-born now accounts for about half of the TB in America.” – Refugee Resettlement Watch

* “The refugee program has a significant impact on U.S. foreign policy. It also affects internal and foreign policies of other nations by allowing them to rid themselves of unwanted minorities or close their borders to asylum seekers in the knowledge that the U.S. will take them in.” – Refugee Resettlement Watch

How Refugees to the United States Are Assigned to Specific Geographic Locations

* “The federal resettlement program began 35 years ago, and today includes some 190 sites across the country.” – Concord Monitor (March 29, 2015)

* FRRP initially dispatches a limited number of new arrivals to particular towns and cities across the United States. These newcomers scarcely make a ripple in those existing communities, rarely drawing significant public notice. But they effectively serve as human “time-release capsules” that, over time, dramatically transform their host communities through the chain migration of their family members and the efforts of activist groups working on their behalf.

* “Medium-size towns, such as Bowling Green, KY, Nashville, TN, Ft. Wayne, IN, Boise, ID and Manchester, NH, are serving as the main reception centers for the refugee program.” – Refugee Resettlement Watch

* “During the last fiscal year,… 7,214 refugees arrived in Texas, 6,108 in California, 4,082 in New York, 4,006 in Michigan and 1,941 in Massachusetts. Connecticut and Maine resettled slightly more than New Hampshire; Vermont and Rhode Island resettled slightly fewer….” – Concord Monitor (March 29, 2015)

* “In New Hampshire, four cities—Nashua, Manchester, Laconia and Concord—take in refugees, but the numbers are not evenly distributed. Nationally, nearly 70,000 refugees immigrated to the U.S. in the last fiscal year; 373 of those came to New Hampshire, and 189 of those came to Concord.” – Concord Monitor (March 29, 2015)

* “New Hampshire’s largest incoming populations are from Bhutan, the Congo and Iraq.” – Concord Monitor (March 29, 2015)

* “Worcester is the largest site for refugee resettlement in Massachusetts, with more than 1,600 refugees resettled in the city in the past five years, including Bhutanese, Burundians, Congolese, Liberians, Iraqis, Russians, Somalis and Vietnamese. Over the past three years, the majority (51 percent) have come from Iraq, with Bhutan second at 28 percent. The State Department normally provides about eight months of assistance to refugees, with the major emphasis on securing a job and finding a place to live. But many refugees arrive with many health and social needs because of years spent in crowded refugee camps, separation from families and unfamiliarity with the English language. – Worcester Telegram (March 5, 2015)

* “Your town will never get out of the program once the contractor has an office set up and staff to pay. Many cities are trying to get out now and can’t: Manchester, NH, Springfield and Lynn, Mass, Amarillo, TX come to mind. Because there have developed ‘pockets of resistance’ (their words), the State Department is desperately out scouting for fresh territory.” – Refugee Resettlement Watch

* From 2003-14, New York’s Erie County was the destination for 9,723resettled refugees. According to the Buffalo News: “From 2003 to 2006, the top countries of origin for immigrants to the Buffalo region were Canada and Yemen. From 2007 to 2012, this shifted and countries more typically associated with refugees – including Burma – topped the charts…. The top languages spoken in the Buffalo Public School System for 2004-2005, 2009-2010, and 2013-2014 were Spanish first, Karen (Burmese) or Arabic second, and Somali or Arabic third…. Meanwhile the number of students in the Buffalo schools categorized as ‘limited English proficient’ increased from 2,539 in 2004 to 4,307 in 2014, with the number of languages spoken rising from 46 to 63.”

* There appears to be a significant political component to the process of deciding where refugees to the U.S. are resettled. For example, Vice President Joe Biden’s home state of Delaware has resettled fewer than 10 refugees annually in recent years, even though Biden, as a member of the U.S. Senate, was a sponsor of the 1980 Refugee Act.

* Similarly, Washington DC took in fewer than 200 refugees between 2007 and 2012.

Refugee Dependence on Government Largesse

* Refugees, successful asylum seekers, trafficking victim visa holders, “Cuban-Haitian Entrants,” and other humanitarian admission groups become eligible for all federal, state, and local welfare programs 30 days after their arrival in the U.S. These programs include:

  • Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF, formerly known as AFDC
  • Medicaid
  • Food Stamps
  • Public Housing
  • Supplemental Security Income (SSI)
  • Social Security Disability Insurance
  • Administration on Developmental Disabilities
  • Child Care and Development Fund
  • Independent Living Program
  • Job Opportunities for Low-Income Individuals
  • Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program
  • Postsecondary Education Loans and Grants
  • Refugee Assistance Programs
  • Title IV Foster Care and Adoption Assistance Payments
  • Title XX Social Services Block Grant Funds

* Refugee “self-sufficiency” is used as an important measure of success and as a basis for assigning refugees to agencies in future contracts. But the definition of “self-sufficiency” has been watered down so dramatically over the years, that it has become essentially meaningless. Today a refugee can be considered “self-sufficient” even while using all of the aforementioned welfare and social-service programs except TANF.

* “Welfare use is staggering among refugees. Welfare usage is never counted by officials as part of the cost of the program. Yet, when it is included, the total cost of the refugee program soars to at least $10-20 billion a year.” – Refugee Resettlement Watch

* “As some Americans are pushed off of time-limited welfare programs, many refugees are going on to life-time cash assistance programs. For instance, 12.7% of refugees are on SSI—a lifetime entitlement to a monthly check / Medicaid for elderly or disabled. This rate of usage is at least 4 times higher than the rate of usage for SSI among the native-born population and is reportedly rising from these already very high levels.” – Refugee Resettlement Watch

* Some refugee groups have developed welfare dependence that persists for multiple generations. Among refugees who arrived in the U.S. between 2003 and 2008, fully 57.7% are on government medical assistance such as Medicaid (this figure excludes children younger than 16); about 25% have no health insurance; 70.2% receive food stamps; 31.6% live in public housing (while many others are on public housing waiting lists); and 38.3 % are getting cash assistance such as TANF or SSI.

* “Refugees who do find work, work at entry-level jobs and minimum wage so they will still be able to benefit from many welfare programs open to low-income Americans. Elder refugees are eligible for SSI. The refugees are Legal Permanent Residents and can begin the citizenship process quickly.” – Refugee Resettlement Watch

Refugees’ Lack of Assimilation in America

* “Assimilation is no longer a goal for any agency involved in refugee resettlement—government or private contractor. The private contractors’ engagement with the refugee is so short—less than 4 months in most cases, that nothing approaching assimilation could even be considered. The term ‘assimilation’ is no longer a part of government lexicon and does not even occur in dozens of recent reports and papers generated about refugee resettlement. The operative term in vogue now is ‘integration’ with its clear intent of maintenance of ethnic identity.” – Refugee Resettlement Watch

Criteria for Taking Asylum Seekers into the United States

* An asylum seeker is legally required to show a “well-founded” fear of persecution on account of a political view or membership in a racial, ethnic, religious or social group. But all three branches of the U.S. government have widely stretched that definition. For example, Congress—which can name whatever group it wants as a class of asylum seekers—once passed a law classifying China’s one-child policy as an example of persecution based upon a political view; consequently, China now heads the list of those who successfully gain asylum in the U.S.

* People may also seek asylum in the U.S. based upon claims of domestic abuse, female genital mutilation, or a lack of services for the disabled.

* The Obama administration has placed a priority on LGBTQI asylum seekers and refugees, resulting in a spike in asylum requests that are made on this basis—even from countries like England. At the 2012 conference of refugee contractors sponsored by the Department of Health & Human Sevices’ Office of Refugee Resettlement, one such contractor demanded that Medicaid pay for newly arrived refugees’ sex-change operations.

* Another of President Obama’s top priorities is the granting of asylum to hundreds of thousands of Muslims who have been displaced from their homes in the Middle East.

* In February 2014, the Obama administration unilaterally eased restrictions on asylum seekers known to have had loose or incidental ties to terrorist and insurgent groups. Specifically, the new policy allowed even some individuals who had provided “limited material support” to terror groups, to be considered for entry into the United States.

Obama’s Plan to Bring 10,000 Syrian “Refugees” to America in 2016

* In September 2015, President Obama announced that he planned to bring some 10,000 Syrian refugees to the U.S. in 2016. Islam scholar Robert Spencer pointed out the inherent danger of such a policy:

  • “The real problem is that last February, the Islamic State promised to flood Europe in the near future with as many as 500,000 refugees. That future is upon us, and it is important to note that the Islamic State was not simply talking about engulfing the continent in a humanitarian crisis that would strain its resources to the breaking point. The jihadis were also planning to cross into Europe among those refugees, and now they’re boasting that they have done so. An Islamic State operative boasted last week that among the flood of refugees, 4,000 Islamic State jihadis had entered Europe. ‘They are going like refugees,’ he said, but they were going with the plan of sowing blood and mayhem on European streets. As he told this to journalists, he smiled and said, ‘Just wait.’ He explained: ‘It’s our dream that there should be a caliphate not only in Syria but in all the world, and we will have it soon, inshallah.’”


Thousands of Muslim Refugees Slated for Idaho and South Carolina

* In October 2015, WorldNetDaily reported:

“The multicultural transformation of Idaho will continue with a planned infusion of hundreds of refugees from Muslim countries over the next one to three years. A local newspaper in Twin Falls reported that city will receive 300 mostly Syrian refugees over the next fiscal year starting Oct. 1. But WND has learned the numbers will be much larger statewide and include refugees from Syria, Iraq, the Democratic Republic of Congo and possibly Somalia. Sources tell WND that community leaders learned of the plans for up to 2,000 refugees at a recent conference at Boise State University attended by church groups, social services providers and other ‘stakeholders.’ … WND reported two weeks ago that Spartanburg, South Carolina, has also been selected for the seeding of a Syrian refugee community. Unlike Boise, residents in Spartanburg have mustered an organized opposition to the infusion of 65 Syrian refugees over the next year, saying the town already has high crime and poverty and isn’t prepared to absorb hundreds of poor Syrians.”

Preference for Muslim, Rather Than Christian, Refugees from Syria

On November 16, 2015, President Obama said suggestions calling for the U.S. to admit only Christian refugees from Syria — which was being ravaged by a brutal civil war and by the barbaric terrorist group ISIS — were “shameful.” But according to a CNS News report the following day, “the reality is that today’s refugee system discriminates, not against Syrian Muslims, but against Christians and other non-Muslim minorities.” Said the CNS report:

“Critics say this is because the federal government relies on the United Nations in the refugee application process – and since Syrian Christians are often afraid to register with the U.N., they and other non-Muslims are left out. Fleeing persecution at the hands of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and other jihadist groups, Syrian Christians generally avoid U.N. refugee camps because they are targeted there too. Most refugees considered for resettlement in the U.S. are referred by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Applications are then handled by one of nine State Department-managed resettlement support centers around the world…. Of 2,184 Syrian refugees admitted into the U.S. since the Syrian civil war erupted in 2011, only 53 (2.4 percent) have been Christians while 2098 (or 96 percent) have been Muslims, according to State Department statistics….”

3. CHANGING THE AMERICAN ELECTORATE VIA HOUSING & ZONING POLICIES

Obama’s Plan to Abolish the Suburbs

* The Obama administration has quietly hatched and implemented a plan designed to win, for the Democratic Party, permanent control over both Houses of Congress. This goal is being pursued district by district, state by state, via a strategy known as Regionalism.

Regionalism seeks to blend the (white and affluent) suburbs, economically and politically, into the (nonwhite and poorer) cities which they border. The goal of this policy is to redistribute large portions of property-tax and school-tax revenues from suburbs to cities. Usually this means that wealth is redistributed from majority-Republican areas to majority-Democrat areas.

  • This strategy of Regionalism has deep roots that stretch back decades. The community organizers who trained Barack Obama in the mid-1980s, for instance, held that cities and their (disproportionately minority) residents suffered great economic injustice whenever middle- and upper-class white residents moved away to the suburbs (“white flight” and “suburban sprawl”), thereby shrinking the cities’ taxpayer base and thus exacerbating the problem of income inequality and its alleged ramifications. Beginning in the mid-1990s, Obama’s mentors at the Gamaliel Foundation spearheaded the fight against “suburban sprawl.” And Obama, as a board member of both the Woods Fund of Chicago and the Joyce Foundation—did everything within his power to funnel money to Gamaliel’s efforts in that regard. And as a politician, he has continued to pursue the same goals.
  • One of Obama’s original trainers from the 1980s, Mike Kruglik, continues Gamaliel’s anti-suburban efforts under the aegis of his new organization, Building One America. Kruglik and two of his fellow intellectual leaders of the modern “anti-sprawl” movement, David Rusk and Myron Orfield, have been working with the Obama administration for years to advance their goal of uniting the inner cities with the surrounding suburbs.

* Author Stanley Kurtz, who has led the way in exposing this duplicitous Obama agenda, explains that the goal of these activists “is quite literally to abolish the suburbs.” But “knowing that this could never happen through outright annexation by nearby cities, they’ve developed ways to coax suburbs to slowly forfeit their independence.”

* This is achieved, Kurtz says, by means of four interrelated, complementary tactics that together comprise the Obama administration’s Sustainable Communities Initiative:

  • Force suburban residents into densely packed cities by prohibiting development on the outskirts of metropolitan areas.
  • Discourage driving by imposing a host of taxes, fees, and regulations on automobile ownership as well as road and bridge usage. Use environmental concerns about carbon emissions and “climate change” as a justification for these measures. In 2013 the Department of Energy laid the groundwork for such policies by releasing, under the heading “Transportation Energy Futures Study,” a series of coordinated reports exploring strategies designed to cut America’s greenhouse gas emissions by up to 80% by the middle of the 21st century.
  • Move the poor out of the inner cities by imposing government-subsidized low-income-housing quotas on middle-class suburbs.
  • Impose a “regional tax-base sharing” structure that channels a portion of suburban tax money into a common regional pot, from where it is then redistributed to low-income urban dwellers via a program of forced “economic integration.”

* In March 2013, the Obama administration announced that it was ordering all federal agencies to consider global warming (i.e., carbon dioxide emissions) before approving large projects. Thus left-wing environmental groups would hold considerable sway over the approval or rejection of suburban development projects.

* Also in March 2013, the Department of Energy published a “built environment” report which proposed conditioning all manner of future federal aid on local adherence to “smart growth” (and “anti-sprawl”) principles. That is, federal funding for new schools or roads would be made contingent on density criteria favoring projects in cities over those in suburbs.

Obama’s Plan to Transform the Demographics of the Suburbs

* On July 19, 2013, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) published a regulation broadening the obligation of recipients of federal aid to “affirmatively further fair housing.” The purpose of this was to force majority-white suburban neighborhoods—even those with no record of engaging in housing discrimination—to build public housing and market it aggressively to ethnic and racial minorities.

* White suburbs will now be pressured to introduce government-subsidized, multi-family, “affordable housing” developments into areas previously zoned for single-family housing. Any municipalities that try to resist can be brought to heel by lawsuits claiming violations of federal fair-housing law. As Stanley Kurtz puts it: “Although the choice to join such regional housing partnerships would technically be voluntary, the administration will be able to use [a] combination of legal threats and funding leverage … to pressure municipalities to join the consortia.”

* The Obama administration plans to use the withholding of federal aid as a means of forcing such requirements on suburbs that are resistant.

* To put this grand scheme into action, HUD will use data on the racial and economic makeup of every community in America. The goal will be to make Republican areas more Democratic, in part by creating the aforementioned “affordable housing” units in suburbia. As investigative journalist and Hoover Institution media fellow Paul Sperry explains, HUD “will map every U.S. neighborhood by four racial groups — white, Asian, black or African-American, and Hispanic/Latino — and publish ‘geospatial data’ pinpointing racial imbalances.”

* HUD’s maps, which use dots to show the racial distribution or density of every residential area in the United States, will be used to select affordable-housing sites.

* But only majority-white neighborhoods will be classified as “segregated.” Those that are 50% or more nonwhite will not be considered “segregated,” and thus will not be required to aggressively recruit new white residents.“Segregation,” in other words, is a one-way phenomenon.

* In addition, the HUD maps will also detail the proximity of black residents to public transportation sites, good schools, parks, and even supermarkets. If the agency’s social engineers determine that these suburban “amenities” are too far from nonwhite population clusters, the municipalities must again find ways to rectify the situation, lest they leave themselves vulnerable to the forfeiture of federal grant money or the specter of housing-discrimination lawsuits.

Civil-rights groups will have access to HUD’s sophisticated mapping software and will be permitted to participate in city plans to re-engineer neighborhoods according to the new requirements. “By opening this [HUD] data to everybody, everyone in a community can weigh in,” says President Obama. “If you want affordable housing nearby, now you’ll have the data you need to make your case.”

* The transformation of the suburbs will achieve a supremely important goal for Obama and the Democrats: It will take many Democrat voters out of heavily Democratic congressional districts, where they are essentially “surplus voters” whose votes are “wasted.” That is, their votes could better serve the Democratic cause if they were shifted into Republican suburbs where they could help tip the political balance in favor of Democrats.

* If enough suburban congressional districts are turned from Republican red to Democrat blue, the makeup of the House of Representatives could be dramatically and permanently transformed—all under the banners of “social justice,” “affordable housing,” and “redressing past racial wrongs.”

Part of a Larger Pattern

* Paul Sperry points out that the Obama administration’s use of the HUD maps and databases with regard to housing discrimination represents just one facet of a much larger pattern. He notes, for instance, that:

  • The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) is compiling, under the rubric of its so-called National Mortgage Database Project, 16 years worth of lending data, broken down by race, examining everything from individual credit scores, to employment records, to personal assets and debts, to bankruptcy histories, to credit lines and interest rates. The FHFA will then share this data with the Obama-created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), which aggressively investigates lenders for evidence of racial bias in lending patterns.
  • The CFPB is separately amassing a database monitoring the transactions of 900 million credit-card accounts held by ordinary U.S. citizens—all sorted by race—for the purpose of detecting “disparities” in interest rates, charge-offs, and collections.
  • In mid-2015, CFPB finalized a rule requiring all regulated banks in the U.S. to report data on their own minority hiring records to an Office of Minority and Women Inclusion, which in turn determines whether those workforces are sufficiently “diverse.”
  • Through its mandatory Civil Rights Data Collection project, the Education Department is gathering information on student suspensions and expulsions, by race, from every public school district in the United States. Districts that show disparities in discipline will be subject to lawsuits filed by the department’s Civil Rights Office. The same will hold true for school districts where “too few” black and Latino students are enrolled in gifted-and-talented or advanced-placement classes.

* “Such databases have never before existed,” writes Sperry. “Obama is presiding over the largest consolidation of personal data in U.S. history. He is creating a diversity police state where government race cops and civil-rights lawyers will micromanage demographic outcomes in virtually every aspect of society. The first black president … has built a quasi-reparations infrastructure perpetually fed by racial data that will outlast his administration.”

* The ever-increasing ubiquity of these databases has the effect of transforming the American electorate on a psychological level, priming the people to perceive racial “discrimination” in virtually every aspect of daily life, every institution, every industry. This, in turn, predisposes them to favor proposals for “compensatory” justice such as affirmative action, reparations, wealth redistribution, etc.

Supreme Court Ruling Gives Boost to Obama’s Plan to Remake the Suburbs

* In June 2015, the Supreme Court issued a ruling in the case of Texas Housing v. Inclusive Communities—a 5-4 decision permitting plaintiffs to base future housing-discrimination lawsuits on population statistics. That is, plaintiffs will no longer be required to show evidence of actual racial discrimination, or even of an intent to discriminate. Instead they can simply cite, as “proof” of discrimination, the racial makeup of a given neighborhood with comparatively few black or Hispanic residents. Even if that neighborhood is able to definitively prove that such a motive has never existed in any way, “disparate impact”—a statistical racial or ethnic imbalance in a given population—is now enough to infer guilt.

* In their lawsuits, plaintiffs can now demand that the communities in question transform themselves into entities that include more minorities. Such transformations, of course, will tend to make those communities more Democratic. Thus the Supreme Court ruling serves the purpose of advancing the Obama/Democrat agenda.

Obama’s HUD Ruling

* On July 8, 2015—approximately two weeks after the Supreme Court’s ruling in Texas Housing v. Inclusive Communities—the Obama administration announced that it would be making an aggressive effort to actively and forcibly integrate residential neighborhoods; that it would introduce a new mandate requiring cities and localities to use federal housing funds to: (a) reduce racial disparities in their populations by building affordable housing in more desirable neighborhoods, and (b) improve the housing stock in lower-income areas, on pain of federal penalties for failure to do so. The details of this scheme were laid out in a 377-page document called the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) Rule.

* AFFH effectively authorizes the federal government to re-engineer virtually every neighborhood in America and create the racial balance it desires. In so doing, AFFH overrules the zoning laws of more than 1,200 local city governments across the country.

* The Obama administration justifies this measure by citing the Fair Housing Act of 1968, which banned overt residential discrimination—e.g., realtors refusing to show apartments or homes to black families, or banks refusing to make mortgage loans to blacks. But the Fair Housing Act constituted a prohibition against segregation; Obama has transformed it into a mandate for forced integration.

* The Obama administration also cites Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited the use of a “facially neutral” practice—i.e., “one that does not appear to be discriminatory on its face,”—that nonetheless “has an unjustified adverse impact on members of a protected class” and thus “is discriminatory in its application or effect.”

* Edward J. Pinto, a housing specialist at the American Enterprise Institute, says: “This is just the latest attempt by HUD to social-engineer the American people. The goal is to get the suburbs to look more like the cities. It’s presumptuous for HUD to think that someone in Washington, DC should decide all of this.”

* Author Stanley Kurtz writes: “Once HUD gets its hooks into a municipality, no policy area is safe. Zoning, transportation, education, all of it risks slipping into the control of the federal government and the new, unelected regional bodies the feds will empower. Over time, AFFH could spell the end of the local democracy that Alexis de Tocqueville rightly saw as the foundation of America’s liberty and distinctiveness.”

* HUD is pitching its new regulations as a plan to “diversify” America. “HUD is working with communities across the country to fulfill the promise of equal opportunity for all,” a spokeswoman for the agency explains. “The proposed policy seeks to break down barriers to access to opportunity in communities supported by HUD funds.”

* Cities that refuse to abide by the new regulations will have federal funds withheld. Moreover, they will face the threat of massive and economically devastating federal lawsuits.

Moving Forward with Plans to Racially Transform America’s Suburbs

In May 2016, journalist Paul Sperry penned an update regarding the Obama administration’s plans to transform America’s suburbs along racial and economic lines. Wrote Sperry:

Housing Secretary Julian Castro is cooking up a scheme to reallocate funding for Section 8 housing to punish suburbs for being too white and too wealthy. The scheme involves super-sizing vouchers to help urban poor afford higher rents in pricey areas, such as Westchester County, while assigning them government real estate agents called “mobility counselors” to secure housing in the exurbs. Castro plans to launch the Section 8 reboot this fall, even though a similar program tested a few years ago in Dallas has been blamed for shifting violent crime to affluent neighborhoods.

It’s all part of a grand scheme to forcibly desegregate inner cities and integrate the outer suburbs. Anticipating NIMBY resistance, Castro last month threatened to sue suburban landlords for discrimination if they refuse even Section 8 tenants with criminal records. And last year, he implemented a powerful new regulation — “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing” — that pressures all suburban counties taking federal grant money to change local zoning laws to build more low-income housing (landlords of such properties are required to accept Section 8 vouchers).

Castro is expected to finalize the new regulation, known as “Small-Area Fair Market Rents” (SAFMR), this October, in the last days of the Obama presidency. It will set voucher rent limits by ZIP code rather than metro area, the current formula, which makes payments relatively small. For example, the fair market rent for a one-bedroom in New York City is about $1,250, which wouldn’t cover rentals in leafy areas of Westchester County, such as Mamaroneck, where Castro and his social engineers seek to aggressively resettle Section 8 tenants.

In expensive ZIP codes, Castro’s plan — which requires no congressional approval — would more than double the standard subsidy, while also covering utilities. At the same time, he intends to reduce subsidies for those who choose to stay in housing in poor urban areas, such as Brooklyn. So Section 8 tenants won’t just be pulled to the suburbs, they’ll be pushed there. “We want to use our housing-choice vouchers to ensure that we don’t have a concentration of poverty and the aggregation of racial minorities in one part of town, the poor part of town,” the HUD chief said recently, adding that he’s trying to undo the “result of discriminatory policies and practices in the past, and sometimes even now.”

A draft of the new HUD rule anticipates more than 350,000 Section 8 voucher holders will initially be resettled under the SAFMR program. Under Obama, the total number of voucher households has grown to more than 2.2 million. The document argues that larger vouchers will allow poor urban families to “move into areas that potentially have better access to jobs, transportation, services and educational opportunities.” In other words, offering them more money to move to more expensive neighborhoods will improve their situation.

But HUD’s own studies show the theory doesn’t match reality. President Bill Clinton started a similar program in 1994 called “Moving to Opportunity Initiative,” which moved thousands of mostly African-American families from government projects to higher-quality homes in safer and less racially segregated neighborhoods in several counties across the country.

The 15-year experiment bombed. A 2011 study sponsored by HUD found that adults using more generous Section 8 vouchers did not get better jobs or get off welfare. In fact, more went on food stamps. And their children did not do better in their new schools. Worse, crime simply followed them to their safer neighborhoods, ruining the quality of life for existing residents….

The problem, [the plan’s architects] rationalized, was that the relocation wasn’t aggressive enough. They concluded they could get the desired results if they placed urban poor in even more affluent areas.

HUD recently tested this new theory in Dallas with disastrous results. Starting in 2012, the agency sweetened Section 8 voucher payments, and pointed inner-city recipients to the far-flung counties surrounding Dallas. As government-subsidized rentals spread in all areas of the Metroplex (163 ZIP codes vs. 129 ZIP codes), so did crime. Now Dallas has one of the highest murder rates in the nation, and recently had to call in state troopers to help police control it. For the first time, violent crime has shifted to the tony bedroom communities north of the city. Three suburbs that have seen the most Section 8 transfers — Frisco, Plano and McKinney — have suffered unprecedented spikes in rapes, assaults and break-ins, including home invasions.

Although HUD’s “demonstration project” may have improved the lives of some who moved, it’s ended up harming the lives of many of their new neighbors. And now Castro wants to roll it out nationwide. Soon he will give Section 8 recipients money to afford rent wherever they choose — and if they don’t want to move, he’ll make them an offer they can’t refuse.

In June 2020, Stanley Kurtz explained how Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden sought to go beyond even the radical aims of AFFH:

Joe Biden and the Democrats want to abolish America’s suburbs. Biden and his party have embraced yet another dream of the radical Left: a federal takeover, transformation, and de facto urbanization of America’s suburbs. What’s more, Biden just might be able to pull off this “fundamental transformation.”

The suburbs are the swing constituency in our national elections. If suburban voters knew what the Democrats had in store for them, they’d run screaming in the other direction. Unfortunately, Republicans have been too clueless or timid to make an issue of the Democrats’ anti-suburban plans. It’s time to tell voters the truth.

I’ve been studying Joe Biden’s housing plans, and what I’ve seen is both surprising and frightening. I expected that a President Biden would enforce the Obama administration’s radical AFFH (Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing) regulation to the hilt. That is exactly what Biden promises to do. By itself, that would be more than enough to end America’s suburbs as we’ve known them, as I’ve explained repeatedly here at NRO.

What surprises me is that Biden has actually promised to go much further than AFFH. Biden has embraced Cory Booker’s strategy for ending single-family zoning in the suburbs and creating what you might call “little downtowns” in the suburbs. Combine the Obama-Biden administration’s radical AFFH regulation with Booker’s new strategy, and I don’t see how the suburbs can retain their ability to govern themselves. It will mean the end of local control, the end of a style of living that many people prefer to the city, and therefore the end of meaningful choice in how Americans can live. Shouldn’t voters know that this is what’s at stake in the election?

It is no exaggeration to say that progressive urbanists have long dreamed of abolishing the suburbs. (In fact, I’ve explained it all in a book.) Initially, these anti-suburban radicals wanted large cities to simply annex their surrounding suburbs, like cities did in the 19th century. That way a big city could fatten up its tax base. Once progressives discovered it had since become illegal for a city to annex its surrounding suburbs without voter consent, they cooked up a strategy that would amount to the same thing.

This de facto annexation strategy had three parts: (1) use a kind of quota system to force “economic integration” on the suburbs, pushing urban residents outside of the city; (2) close down suburban growth by regulating development, restricting automobile use, and limiting highway growth and repair, thus forcing would-be suburbanites back to the city; (3) use state and federal laws to force suburbs to redistribute tax revenue to poorer cities in their greater metropolitan region. If you force urbanites into suburbs, force suburbanites back into cities, and redistribute suburban tax revenue, then presto! You have effectively abolished the suburbs.

Obama’s radical AFFH regulation puts every part of progressives’ “abolish the suburbs” strategy into effect (as I explain in detail here). Once Biden starts to enforce AFFH the way Obama’s administration originally meant it to work, it will be as if America’s suburbs had been swallowed up by the cities they surround. They will lose control of their own zoning and development, they will be pressured into a kind of de facto regional-revenue redistribution, and they will even be forced to start building high-density low-income housing. The latter, of course, will require the elimination of single-family zoning. With that, the basic character of the suburbs will disappear. At the very moment when the pandemic has made people rethink the advantages of dense urban living, the choice of an alternative will be taken away.

That’s all bad enough. But on top of AFFH, Biden now plans to use Cory Booker’s strategy for attacking suburban zoning. AFFH works by holding HUD’s Community Development Block Grants hostage to federal-planning demands. Suburbs won’t be able to get the millions of dollars they’re used to in HUD grants unless they eliminate single-family zoning and densify their business districts. AFFH also forces HUD-grant recipients to sign pledges to “affirmatively further fair housing.” Those pledges could get suburbs sued by civil-rights groups, or by the feds, if they don’t get rid of single-family zoning. The only defense suburbs have against this two-pronged attack is to refuse HUD grants. True, that will effectively redistribute huge amounts of suburban money to cities, but if they give up their HUD grants at least the suburbs will be free of federal control.

The Booker approach — now endorsed by Biden — may block even this way out. Booker wants to hold suburban zoning hostage not only to HUD grants, but to the federal transportation grants used by states to build and repair highways. It may be next to impossible for suburbs to opt out of those state-run highway repairs. Otherwise, suburban roads will deteriorate and suburban access to major arteries will be blocked. AFFH plus the Booker plan will leave America’s suburbs with no alternative but to eliminate their single-family zoning and turn over their planning to the feds. Slowly but surely, suburbs will become helpless satellites of the cities they surround, exactly as progressive urbanists intend. […] 

With AFFH restored to its original form by a President Biden, enforced to the hilt, and turbo-charged by the Booker strategy, suburbs as we know them will pass from the scene.

With them will disappear the principle of local control that has been the key to American exceptionalism from the start. Since the Pilgrims first landed, our story has been of a people who chose how and where to live, and who governed themselves when they got there. Self-government in a layered federalist system allowing for local control right down to the township is what made America great. If Biden and the Democrats win, that key to our greatness could easily go by the boards.

4. CHANGING THE AMERICAN ELECTORATE VIA ELECTION LAWS

Targeting Southern States Regarding Their Election Laws

* Throughout his tenure (2009-15) in the Department of Justice (DOJ), President Obama’s Attorney General, Eric Holder, sought to force southern states to loosen or abandon anti-voter-fraud measures such as voter ID laws.

The Obama Administration Sues Florida for Trying to Purge Its Voter Rolls of Ineligible Names

* In 2012, Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner worked with Florida’s Department of Motor Vehicles to identify more than 2,600 people who were registered to vote by the DMV despite having been non-citizens when they applied for their driver’s licenses. Further, Detzner said that earlier investigations by his agency had identified—by comparing voter rolls and driver’s-license databases—some 182,000 registered voters who were non-citizens. Detzner also revealed that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had refused his request for access to a federal database containing more up-to-date immigration and citizenship information.

* Also in Florida, some 53,000 dead registered voters were discovered when the state—as a result of the passage of an election law by the GOP-controlled legislature—compared voter rolls to federal Social Security files for the first time.

* In late May 2012, Eric Holder’s DOJ ordered the state of Florida to halt the efforts it was making to identify and purge its voter rolls of ineligible names such as those of non-citizens, people who had moved out-of-state, or people who were deceased.

* When Florida failed to comply with Holder’s demand, the DOJ filed a lawsuit against the state on June 12, 2012.

The Obama Administration Sues Texas Over Its Voter ID Law

* In August 2013 the Justice Department sued Texas over a newly passed voter ID measure. The suit claimed that the state “knew or should have known that Hispanic and African-American Texans disproportionately lack the forms of photo ID required” by the law. “We will keep fighting aggressively to prevent voter disenfranchisement,” said Eric Holder. “… This represents the department’s latest action to protect voting rights, but it will not be our last.”

The Obama Administration Sues North Carolina Over Its Voter ID Law

* In September 2013, the Obama administration sued North Carolina to block newly enacted rules which required voters to show photo identification at the polls. According to Obama, those rules violated federal civil-rights law because they “disproportionately exclude minority voters.”

How the Census Laws Governing the Apportionment of Electoral Votes to Each State, Make It Possible for Illegal Aliens to Determine the Winner of a Presidential Election

In October 2015, Politico.com reported the following:

“llegal immigrants—along with other noncitizens without the right to vote—may pick the 2016 presidential winner. Thanks to the unique math undergirding the Electoral College, the mere presence of 11-12 million illegal immigrants and other noncitizens here legally may enable them to swing the election from Republicans to Democrats.

“The right to vote is intended to be a singular privilege of citizenship. But the 1787 Constitutional Convention rejected allowing the people to directly elect their President. The delegates chose instead our Electoral College system, under which 538 electoral votes distributed amongst the states determine the presidential victor. The Electoral College awards one elector for each U.S. Senator, thus 100 of the total, and D.C. gets three electors pursuant to the 23rd Amendment. Those electoral numbers are unaffected by the size of the noncitizen population. The same cannot be said for the remaining 435, more than 80 percent of the total, which represent the members elected to the House.

“The distribution of these 435 seats is not static: they are reapportioned every ten years to reflect the population changes found in the census. That reallocation math is based on the relative ‘whole number of persons in each state,’ as the formulation in the 14th Amendment has it. When this language was inserted into the U.S. Constitution, the concept of an ‘illegal immigrant,’ as the term is defined today, had no meaning. Thus the census counts illegal immigrants and other noncitizens equally with citizens. Since the census is used to determine the number of House seats apportioned to each state, those states with large populations of illegal immigrants and other noncitizens gain extra seats in the House at the expense of states with fewer such ‘whole number of persons.’

“This math gives strongly Democratic states an unfair edge in the Electoral College. Using citizen-only population statistics, American University scholar Leonard Steinhorn projects California would lose five House seats and therefore five electoral votes. New York and Washington would lose one seat, and thus one electoral vote apiece. These three states, which have voted overwhelming for Democrats over the latest six presidential elections, would lose seven electoral votes altogether. The GOP’s path to victory, by contrast, depends on states that would lose a mere three electoral votes in total. Republican stronghold Texas would lose two House seats and therefore two electoral votes. Florida, which Republicans must win to reclaim the presidency, loses one seat and thus one electoral vote.

“But that leaves the electoral math only half done. The 10 House seats taken away from these states would then need to be reallocated to states with relatively small numbers of noncitizens. The following ten states, the bulk of which lean Republican, would likely gain one House seat and thus one additional electoral vote: Iowa, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania.”

5. CHANGING THE AMERICAN ELECTORATE VIA POLITICAL ACTIVISM

How the “Colorado Model” Turned a Red State Blue

* In 2010, former Republican politician Rob Witwer and newsman Adam Schraeger collaborated to publish a book titled The Blueprint: How the Democrats Won Colorado, explaining how a group of very wealthy leftists had changed the entire political landscape of Colorado over a five-year period. They dubbed this phenomenon the “Colorado Model,” which, after being tested and refined in that state, could be exported to other states and congressional districts. The long-term goal was to tip the political balance in those states and districts in favor of Democrats, thereby transforming both the U.S. House and Senate into permanent Democrat strongholds.

* In the 2000 presidential election, Republican George W. Bush wonColorado by 9 percentage points. Two years later, Bill Owens was reelected governor of that state by a huge margin of 63% to 34% over his Democratic opponent.

* But thanks to the implementation of the Colorado Model in the 2004 and 2006 election cycles, Democrats routed Republicans, winning the governorship, both houses of the state legislature, a U.S. Senate seat, and two U.S. House seats—despite the fact that Democratic registered voters in the state were were slightly outnumbered by both Independents and Republicans.

* Journalist Fred Barnes, who has studied the Colorado Model extensively, writes that it “depends partly on wealthy liberals’ spending tons of money not only on ‘independent expenditures’ to attack Republican office-seekers but also to create a vast infrastructure of liberal organizations that produces an anti-Republican, anti-conservative echo chamber in politics and the media.”

* Eric O’Keefe, chairman of the conservative Sam Adams Alliance in Chicago, has built on Barnes’s analysis by identifying seven vital “capacities” that a political strategy must possess in order to be successful. These include the capacities to: (1) generate intellectual ammunition, (2) pursue investigations, (3) mobilize for elections, (4) fight media bias, (5) pursue strategic litigation, (6) train new leaders, and (7) sustain a presence in the new media. When institutions that possess one or more of these respective capacities work together, their efforts generate considerable political noise and attract a great deal of press coverage. As Jon Caldara, president of a Denver-based conservative think tank known as the Independence Institute, puts it: “Build an echo chamber and the media laps it up.”

* The Colorado Strategy achieved all seven of the “capacities” identified by O’Keefe. It did this through the efforts of: (1) the think tank Bighorn & Bell, founded by computer software magnate Rutt Bridges to generate intellectual ammunition; (2) the online newspaper Colorado Independent, founded in 2006 to dig up and investigate evidence of wrongdoing by Republicans; (3) the political advocacy group ProgressNowAction.org, established in 2005 as a state-level clone of MoveOn.org (to mobilize progressive voters and campaign workers for elections); (4) Colorado Media Matters, created in 2006 as a local version of Media Matters For America (to harass journalists and editorial writers who were critical of the liberal line); (5) the “public interest” law firm Colorado Ethics Watch, founded in 2006 to pursue strategic litigation; (6) the Center for Progressive Leadership Colorado, a training center for new liberal leaders; and (7) new-media outlets like ColoradoPols.com and SquareState.net, where bloggers and online news-and-gossip writers promote left-wing views and agendas. These various entities work synergistically to spur political chatter that eventually gets attention from the mainstream media.

* The Colorado Model’s four major funders were initially brought together in 2004 by Al Yates, the former president of Colorado State University. Dubbed the “Gang of Four” by the press, these funders were: Jared Polis, who became wealthy from building and selling Internet companies; Pat Stryker, heir to a medical-products fortune and the head of her family’s charitable foundation; and Tim Gill and Rutt Bridges, both of whom made their fortunes in the computer-software industry. These four individuals personally funded dozens of ideologically allied nonprofit organizations that worked together to topple Colorado’s Republican establishment and install Democratic policymakers in its place.

* Another key tactic of the Colorado Model is to initially run moderateDemocratic candidates who campaign as centrists rather than as liberals—particularly if they are running against Republicans who, according to polling data, might be vulnerable in some way. By thus getting a proverbial “foot in the door” via the election of political moderates, the Democrats can subsequently run candidates who are increasingly left-wing in their positions—and gradually build a lasting dominance.

Battleground Texas

Launched on February 26, 2013, Battleground Texas (BT) seeks to transform the traditionally Republican Lone Star State into a Democratic stronghold by “expanding the electorate by registering more voters—and, as importantly, mobilizing those Texans who are already registered but who have not been engaged in the democratic process.”

* Toward that end, BT relies heavily on the efforts of volunteers and organizers “knocking on doors, registering voters, and engaging Texans” to support Democratic candidates. (As of February 2014, the organization claimed to have more than 10,000 volunteers with deputy voter registrar status.) Vowing to “change the face of presidential politics in this country as we know it,” BT points out that “with 38 electoral votes at stake, a blue [Democratic] Texas would be a surefire road to the White House.” In short, the objective is to take Texas and make it impossible for Republicans to ever again win a presidential election.

* BT notes that as of 2012, Hispanics (who tend to vote heavily Democratic) constituted 41% of Texas’ citizenry, while whites were 43%. In BT’s calculus, existing demographic trends (birth rates, immigration rates, and the gradual maturation of Texas’s large pre-voting-age Hispanic population) will eventually—by themselves—make Texas a plurality-Hispanic state by 2017and a majority-Hispanic (and thus majority-Democrat) state by 2036. But the organization aims to focus on three major priorities in order to more rapidly make demography into destiny for Texas:

  • Voter Registration: Because Hispanics in Texas have been far less likely than their white counterparts to be registered voters, BT places heavy emphasis on registering the state’s 1.5 million unregistered Hispanics. It also seeks to target the 500,000 unregistered African-Americans and 200,000 unregistered Asian-Americans, groups that are likewise reliable supporters of Democrats.
  • Voter Participation: Noting that Hispanics have been significantly less inclined than whites to vote even when registered, BT devotes many of its resources and energies to voter-mobilization initiatives.
  • Voting Blue: BT strives to influence public opinion in Texas via messaging that depicts Republicans as racists who do not understand the needs and concerns of nonwhite voters.

* BT’s senior adviser is Jeremy Bird, who served as national field director of President Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign and is the founder of a consulting firm called 270 Strategies; Bird previously worked on the presidential campaigns of Obama in 2008, John Kerry in 2004, and Howard Dean, also in 2004.

* In February 2014, investigative journalist James O’Keefe released undercover video evidence that BT was illegally saving phone numbers and addresses from voter-registration forms, in order to expand its contact list for later efforts to maximize voter turnout on election day. According to Breitbart News, “Texas Election Code prohibits the use of, or even the copying of, phone numbers provided by individuals registering to vote.” But O’Keefe’s video footage showed BT field organizer Jennifer Longoria saying, “Every time we register somebody to vote, we keep their name, address, phone number…. That data collection is the key.”

6. CHANGING THE AMERICAN ELECTORATE VIA “CRIMINAL-JUSTICE REFORM”

Releasing Thousands of Prisoners, Most of Whom Will Vote Democrat When They Regain Their Voting Rights

On October 7, 2015, the New York Times reported that the Obama Justice Department was “preparing to release roughly 6,000 inmates from federal prisons starting at the end of this month as part of an effort to ease overcrowding and roll back the harsh penalties given to nonviolent drug dealers in the 1980s and ’90s, according to federal law enforcement officials.” “The release will be one of the largest discharges of inmates from federal prisons in American history,” said the Times, describing it as an “effort to ease the mass incarcerations that followed decades of tough sentencing for drug offenses — like dealing crack cocaine — which have taken a particularly harsh toll on minority communities.”

Said the Washington Post: “The early release follows action by the U.S. Sentencing Commission — an independent agency that sets sentencing policies for federal crimes — that reduced the potential punishment for future drug offenders last year and then made that change retroactive. The commission’s action is separate from an effort by President Obama to grant clemency to certain nonviolent drug offenders, an initiative that has resulted in the early release of 89 inmates. The panel estimated that its change in sentencing guidelines eventually could result in 46,000 of the nation’s approximately 100,000 drug offenders in federal prison qualifying for early release. The 6,000 figure, which has not been reported previously, is the first tranche in that process.”

Obama’s decision to release large numbers of prisoners is highly significant in light of the fact that a large majority of inmates (and former inmates) are registered Democrats. Consider this January 1, 2014 article by Paul Bedard in The Washington Examiner:

A new study of how criminals vote found that most convicts register Democratic, a key reason in why liberal lawmakers and governors are eager for them to get back into the voting booth after their release. ‘Democrats would benefit from additional ex-felon participation,’ said the authoritative study in The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. The authors, professors from the University of Pennsylvania and Stanford University, found that in some states, felons register Democratic by more than six-to-one. In New York, for example, 61.5 percent of convicts are Democrats, just 9 percent Republican. They also cited a study that found 73 percent of convicts who turn out for presidential elections would vote Democrat…. 

The study looked at three states which are reminding convicts that they can vote after leaving jail: New YorkNew Mexico and North Carolina. They provided the following Democrat-to-Republican breakdown in felon party registration patterns:

  • New York: 61.5 percent register Democratic, 9 percent register Republican
  • New Mexico: 51.9 percent Democratic, 10.2 percent Republican
  • North Carolina: 54.6 percent Democratic, 10.2 percent Republican

Overall, said the study, there are 5.8 million eligible voters in jail, about 2.5 percent of the voting age population. Most are young black males, it added.

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