President Obama Friday made a downpayment on the sweeping immigration “reform” he is expected to unilaterally declare once the elections are out of the way, permitting up to around 100,000 prospective Haitian immigrants to bypass immigration law and enter the country.

The move, a typical Friday announcement designed to attract minimum notice, eliminated wait times for future Florida Democratic voters Haitians who have been approved to gain green cards in two years, allowing them to make their way to the United States beginning in 2015 instead and begin working if they want.

Their entry has to have been petitioned by “family” members already in the United States.

There’s a gentleman near me who runs a flop house renting rooms out to immigrants, and the local authorities can’t do a thing about it because they’re all “family” and the burden of proof is on the state to show they’re not.

I’ll tell ya, that fellow has a large, changing, and even ethnically diverse family. Fortunately those living there now seem nice and even possibly related.

According to the New York Times, the new legalization has the same rationale that may be used as part of Obama’s expected mass legalization program:

Friday’s announcement is not part of that broader executive action, but includes an element that the administration is considering for wider use. In some proposals, temporary parole, like that planned for the Haitian relatives, could be offered to a much larger group of close relatives of American citizens who are in the United States illegally.

However, Haitians who snuck into the United States illegally are not included. Yet.

“Which countries are next on President Obama’s list?” demanded Senate Judiciary ranking member Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa in a stinging statement. “Will there be medical screenings before entry? Will work permits be granted automatically? How will this affect American workers?

Speaking to the Miami Herald, an administration official did not try to hide that the action was taken in lieu of legislation.

Comprehensive immigration reform would have solved this problem not just for Haitians but for all other nationalities who are waiting in the immigrant visa backlog because it would have substantially increased the numbers of family immigrant visas available and people would have been able to come in as permanent residents. As it hasn’t happened, we are proceeding with this program.

Forget it Chuck. Americans – as intended – are becoming so inured to extralegal action by this administration that this will provoke hardly a yawn, and not even that from the mainstream press.

Haiti is a miserable place, where hundreds of thousands died in the 2010 earthquake. But there are many places suffering horribly in the world.

America the most compassionate country on earth. If a law gets in the way of a decision to target Haitians for relief, it’s the job of Congress, not Obama, to change it.