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Napolitano Says ‘Our Hands Are Tied’ When It Comes To Dealing With Undocumented Youth

By Andrea Nill Sanchez on Nov 14, 2009 at 10:00 am

Yesterday, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano made the case for the enactment of comprehensive immigration reform at the an event hosted by the Center for American Progress. One topic that Napolitano did not touch on during her speech is the plight of young undocumented immigrants — many who had little say when they were illegally brought to the country by their parents at a young age and have always considered the U.S. “home.”

Napolitano told ThinkProgress that the Department’s “hands are tied” and that the situation must be addressed through comprehensive immigration reform:

This illustrates again, why we need immigration reform. And the DREAM Act should be part of any bill that comes out of Congress. It is heartbreaking when you have a case of a young person who has been raised in this country, wants to go to college and can’t — or commits a minor crime and must be deported. And our hands our tried, we have very little discretion in those matters. So if we want to change that, we need to have the reform. And I think the members of Congress who are working on this all agree that some form of a DREAM Act-type provision would be an important inclusion.

Watch it:

The DREAM Act that Napolitano refers to is a piece of bipartisan legislation that has been repeatedly proposed in both the House and Senate that would provide a path to U.S. citizenship for undocumented immigrants who entered the country more than five years ago while they were under the age of 16 and who complete two years of college or two years of military service. Currently, DHS deals with deportation petitions on a case-by-case basis and has deferred the final removal orders of many, but not all, young undocumented immigrants.

The College Board estimates that approximately 65,000 undocumented students who have lived in the U.S. for five years graduated from high school this past spring and now face overwhelming barriers to higher education and continued development. According to the College Board, the DREAM Act would provide an estimated 360,000 undocumented high school graduates with a “legal means to work and attend college,” and provide incentives for another 715,000 children between the ages of five and 17 to finish high school and pursue postsecondary education.

Politics

‘Death Panels’ Hypocrisy: RNC Health Insurance Provider Promotes End-Of-Life Counseling

By Amanda Terkel on Nov 14, 2009 at 9:20 am

Over the summer, one of the GOP’s loudest complaints against health care legislation was a provision offering senior citizens Medicare reimbursement for end-of-life counseling. Republicans claimed it would create so-called “death panels” or urge seniors citizens to die. RNC Chairman Michael Steele “endorsed this type of rhetoric, and on July 28, the RNC put out research document claiming that the government would “dictate” Americans’ “end-of-life care.”

But ThinkProgress has noticed that Cigna, the RNC’s health insurance provider, also urges beneficiaries to think about end-of-life services. Cigna’s website has a page called “Care at the End of Life,” which covers topics such as how to talk with “loved ones” about “end-of-life choices” and whether to stop life-prolonging treatment:

It’s unclear whether the RNC’s insurance plan covers these end-of-life consultations, and neither Cigna nor the RNC replied to inquiries from ThinkProgress. But nevertheless, the RNC’s insurance provider has posted information on its website advising beneficiaries about the complicated questions that accompany decisions at the end of someone’s life.

There is nothing objectionable about this planning, which has been endorsed by Democrats, Republicans like Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-GA), and the AARP. But this type of advice is exactly what the GOP fear-mongered about this summer. As FactCheck.org explained:

What the bill actually provides for is voluntary Medicare-funded end-of-life counseling. In other words, if seniors choose to make advance decisions about the type of care and treatments they wish to receive at the end of their lives, Medicare will pay for them to sit down with their doctor and discuss their preferences. There is no requirement to attend regular sessions, and there is absolutely no provision encouraging euthanasia.

Recently, the RNC has been urging lawmakers to support the anti-choice Stupak amendment, which would not only ban women on the federal exchange from using federal funds for abortion, but could bar employer-sponsored plans from offering the coverage. However, Politico reported this week that the RNC health care plan under Cigna has coverage for elective abortion services. Upon hearing the news, the RNC quickly opted-out of the abortion coverage, although its money is still indirectly subsidizing other women’s abortions.

If end-of-life counseling is so scary, will the RNC also call up Cigna and object? Or will it admit that there’s nothing wrong with these services and all the protests this summer were nothing more than political posturing?

(HT: TP reader Jason S.)

Update

Greg Sargent heard from Cigna spokesman Chris Curran, who said “that while Cigna encourages customers to discuss such issues with their customers, the company doesn’t offer any insurance product that covers them.”

Related Posts

Climate Progress

Record high temperatures far outpace record lows across U.S.

By Joe Romm on Nov 14, 2009 at 8:41 am

Spurred by a warming climate, daily record high temperatures occurred twice as often as record lows over the last decade across the continental United States, new research shows. The ratio of record highs to lows is likely to increase dramatically in coming decades if emissions of greenhouse gases continue to climb.

temps

This graphic shows the ratio of record daily highs to record daily lows observed at about 1,800 weather stations in the 48 contiguous United States from January 1950 through September 2009. Each bar shows the proportion of record highs (red) to record lows (blue) for each decade. The 1960s and 1970s saw slightly more record daily lows than highs, but in the last 30 years record highs have increasingly predominated, with the ratio now about two-to-one for the 48 states as a whole.  (©UCAR, graphic by Mike Shibao.)

This is from the news release of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).  The scientific paper itself is here (subs. req’d).  A blog post on this by the NYT‘s Andy Revkin is here.  And NCAR posted a video of lead author Gerald Meehl discussing his findings:

Read more

Yglesias

If Only There Were Some Kind of Special Court for That

By Matthew Yglesias on Nov 14, 2009 at 8:31 am

Yesterday I was looking in my inbox at a statement from Joe Lieberman on the idea of trying KSM in a civilian court in New York, and I found myself surprisingly sympathetic to his first sentence: “The terrorists who planned, participated in, and aided the September 11, 2001 attacks are war criminals, not common criminals.” Then, of course, Lieberman winds up veering in the direction of saying that we need to try KSM in some special kangaroo court military commission.

But really if the United States were willing to some day come to its senses and join the International Criminal Court it seems to me that this would be a good venue in which to prosecute major international terrorists. Barring that, I think a regular criminal court will do. But part of working toward a long-term solution to the issue of safe havens ought to be a formal process by which an individual can be declared an international outlaw who all governments have a responsibility to apprehend and hand over for trial to an international court.

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