Not unexpectedly President Obama has chosen a longtime advocate for bringing more immigrants to the US for a deputy assistant secretary at Homeland Security.
According to the Colorado Independent:
Esther Olavarria, a Senior Fellow and Director of Immigration Policy at the Center for American Progress, is Obama’s pick for deputy assistant secretary of homeland security for policy.
Olavarria, in particular, signals a major change for DHS.
Not only does she come from the progressive CAP, but she spent almost 10 years as counsel to Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Refugees. Her work there included proposals on comprehensive immigration reform. Olavarria started her career as an immigrants’ advocate when she was a managing attorney of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center; she has also been directing attorney of the American Immigration Lawyers Association Pro Bono Project and staff attorney at the Haitian Refugee Center in Miami.
Left out of this report is that she also previously worked for the UNHCR (UN High Commissioner for Refugees).
Regular readers will remember that John Podesta’s Center for American Progress is infamous for recently suggesting we airlift 100,000 Iraqis to the US this year. Because of her position at CAP’s Olavarria must have been behind that scheme.