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Apparently Mayorkas was also an Obama appointee who helped several influential Democrats obtain visas for rich Chinese investors. This was known as far back as 2015, when this article was written...
By Dara Lind [email protected] Mar 26, 2015, 1:30pm EDT
"The deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security is embroiled in a scandal involving a program that hands out green cards to rich Chinese investors.
No, that's the legal part.
The scandalous part is the allegation, newly released in a DHS inspector general report, that when Deputy Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas was head of US Citizenship and Immigration Services, he inserted himself into the evaluation process for investor visas in a few different cases. In each of the four incidents the report looked at, Mayorkas did slightly different things to urge colleagues to reconsider decisions they'd made — after being in contact with powerful Democrats affiliated with the projects. The report names four men as beneficiaries of Mayorkas's attention, Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell; Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid; Hillary Clinton's brother, Anthony Rodham; and current Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe.
Republicans are running with it — the first hearing about the scandal took place in the House Homeland Security Committee Thursday. Democrats, meanwhile, are defending Mayorkas because he never actually broke the law.
This scandal happened right before Mayorkas himself overhauled the way visa applications were considered in the name of making the process less arbitrary. In some ways, Mayorkas's alleged misconduct is an almost inevitable outcome of a program whose basic cash-for-visas structure has long been open to a range of sketchy dealings..."
How an Obama appointee helped influential Democrats get visas for rich immigrants
How an Obama appointee helped influential Democrats get visas for rich immigrants
By Dara Lind [email protected] Mar 26, 2015, 1:30pm EDT
"The deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security is embroiled in a scandal involving a program that hands out green cards to rich Chinese investors.
No, that's the legal part.
The scandalous part is the allegation, newly released in a DHS inspector general report, that when Deputy Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas was head of US Citizenship and Immigration Services, he inserted himself into the evaluation process for investor visas in a few different cases. In each of the four incidents the report looked at, Mayorkas did slightly different things to urge colleagues to reconsider decisions they'd made — after being in contact with powerful Democrats affiliated with the projects. The report names four men as beneficiaries of Mayorkas's attention, Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell; Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid; Hillary Clinton's brother, Anthony Rodham; and current Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe.
Republicans are running with it — the first hearing about the scandal took place in the House Homeland Security Committee Thursday. Democrats, meanwhile, are defending Mayorkas because he never actually broke the law.
This scandal happened right before Mayorkas himself overhauled the way visa applications were considered in the name of making the process less arbitrary. In some ways, Mayorkas's alleged misconduct is an almost inevitable outcome of a program whose basic cash-for-visas structure has long been open to a range of sketchy dealings..."
How an Obama appointee helped influential Democrats get visas for rich immigrants
