Ecuadorian woman banned from US for visa fraud is allowed back in after giving Democrats "donations"

(NaturalNews) With President Obama, it's all politics, all the time.

The White House has overturned a ban on keeping a wealthy, politically connected Ecuadorean woman out of the country after her family shelled out tens of thousands of dollars to Democratic campaigns, The New York Times reported, citing government officials and finance records.

The woman, Estefania Isaias, was banned from coming into the United Sates after being caught defrauding the system to obtain visas for her maids. However, the ban was summarily removed after the State Department -- under former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton -- requested it so that Isaias could go to work at an Obama fundraiser that just happened to have close ties to the White House.

The Times further reported:

It was one of several favorable decisions the Obama administration made in recent years involving the Isaias family, which the government of Ecuador accuses of buying protection from Washington and living comfortably in Miami off the profits of a looted bank in Ecuador.

For the Obama regime, influence is always for sale, but that shouldn't surprise anyone, given that he quietly signed a bill banning public funding of political campaigns in April (you can no longer check that $3 voluntary contribution box on your income tax return, in other words).

As for the Isaias family, it has been investigated by federal authorities from various agencies on suspicion of money laundering and immigration fraud. But no worries: the family has made hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of political contributions in recent years, the Times reported.

Obama also ended public financing of campaigns

As such, during that time, the family has repeatedly gotten favorable treatment from the highest levels of the Obama administration, including from senior New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez, a Democrat, and the Obama State Department.

The White House has given the green light to the family's patriarchs, Roberto and William Isaias, to stay in the U.S., steadfastly refusing to extradite them to Ecuador. The brothers were sentenced in absentia in 2012 to eight years in prison after being found guilty of bankrupting their bank and then providing phony balance sheets to make a profit from bailout funds.

The Times also reported:

In a highly politicized case, Ecuador says the fraud cost the country $400 million.

The family's affairs have rankled Ecuador and strained relations with the United States at a time when the two nations are also at odds over another international fugitive: Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, who has taken refuge in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London.

That said, scrutiny has usually centered in on whether or not the family's political campaign donations have kept its patriarchs from being extradited to face their fate in Ecuador. But the highly unusual assistance provided to Estefania Isaias, the daughter of Roberto, has gotten far less attention, the Times noted, because she, too, has been in trouble.

In the spring of 2011, Isaias -- herself a television executive -- was barred from entering the U.S. even as her father and uncle were fugitives from Ecuador living in Miami. She was barred after bringing maids into the U.S. under false visa pretenses and then leaving them at her parents' home in the city as she traveled. American consular officials in Ecuador have called it "alien smuggling."

So, U.S. diplomats began enforcing the ban against Isaias, disallowing her from going to Miami to take a job with a bundler who raised as much as a half-million dollars for Obama. What happened after that demonstrates what kind of access to American politicians that money buys.

Money can buy some love

As the Times reported:

For more than a year, Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, and his staff engaged in a relentless effort to help Ms. Isaias, urging senior government officials, including Mrs. Clinton's chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, to waive the ban. The senator's assistance came even though Ms. Isaias's family, a major donor to him and other American politicians, does not live in his state.

The Obama administration then reversed its decision and gave Ms. Isaias the waiver she needed to come to the United States -- just as tens of thousands of dollars in donations from the family poured into Mr. Obama's campaign coffers.

The Times said that a day after, an email from Menendez's office, dated May 15, 2012, announced the good news for Ms. Isaias; her mother sent a $40,000 donation to the Obama Victory Fund.

Sources:

http://www.nytimes.com

http://www.theguardian.com

http://www.nytimes.com