The bad news for illegals: Even if you qualify as a “refugee,” winning an asylum case in federal court is difficult under current law. The good news: The guy in charge right now isn’t a stickler about legal procedure. And besides, the “refugee” label is more of a political weapon under these circumstances than a legal one. It’s one thing to turn a blind eye to illegal immigrants streaming across the border, but who could be so hard-hearted as to deport a “refugee”?

Don’t fret much about the label, though. Most of these kids will never report to their immigration hearing once they’re released by the Border Patrol, so whatever you call them, they’re here to stay.

United Nations officials are pushing for many of the Central Americans fleeing to the U.S. to be treated as refugees displaced by armed conflict, a designation meant to increase pressure on the United States to accept tens of thousands of people currently ineligible for asylum.

Officials with the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees say they hope to see a regional agreement on that status Thursday when migration and interior department representatives from the U.S., Mexico, and Central America meet in Nicaragua. The group will discuss updating a 30-year-old declaration regarding the obligations nations have to aid refugees…

Most of the people widely considered to be refugees by the international community are fleeing more traditional political or ethnic conflicts like those in Syria or the Sudan. Central Americans would be among the first modern migrants considered refugees because they are fleeing violence and extortion at the hands of criminal gangs.

A special new category of refugee, now conveniently available for amnesty shills in the United States to argue that illegal immigration should continue unimpeded for humanitarian reasons. Assuming that a regional agreement is reached, it would have no legal weight in the U.S. — unless of course His Majesty the King declareth that it shall. Maybe that’s O’s next move if, after kinda sorta trying to slow the flow at the border, he decides there’s not much he can do after all and had better rebrand what’s happening to contain the political damage. With 300,000 more “refugees” on the way, I wonder how long he’ll give it before pivoting.

Speaking of which, Obama was planning to ask Congress for $2 billion in added border resources plus a change to federal law so that children could be deported more expeditiously. Currently, kids caught coming across the border get to stay put in the U.S. while they await an immigration hearing; because there have been so many coming recently, the White House wanted to truncate the process so that they could be sent home right away. Obama’s pro-amnesty base was unhappy about that, though, so it’s time for a new pivot:

President Barack Obama is holding off for now on seeking new legal authority to send unaccompanied migrant kids back home faster from the Southern border, following criticism that the administration’s planned changes were too harsh…

The new approach comes after the White House told Congress last week that it would seek “additional authority” for the Homeland Security secretary to quickly return the minors back home. Immigration advocates understood this to mean that the children, who currently have the right to a hearing before an immigration judge, would lose that right and instead would have to make it through an initial screening with a Border Patrol agent.

The immigrant advocacy community responded angrily, with more than 200 groups signing onto a letter last week calling on Obama to reconsider the changes.

The Orwellian irony there is that amnesty fans are pounding the table about due process for minors caught entering the U.S. illegally when, in many cases, those same minors won’t end up availing themselves of the process that’s due. The point isn’t to make sure they get a hearing before being deported, it’s to create a pretext that allows them to remain in the U.S. for the time being so that they can quietly disappear into the population while supposedly waiting for their hearing. “Due process” is, in other words, being used as a tool to abet the breakdown in process, facilitating illegal immigration. And the chief executive is happy to let that go on, at least for now. Instead of pursuing summary deportation, he’s going to ask Congress for $3.8 billion in extra resources, nearly double his initial amount, to “process” all the new cases. Even though, as we all understand, many of them will end up going unprocessed, by design.

Makes me wonder, though: Does the fact that he’s making a concession to amnesty advocates now mean that he’s planning to go slow on that mass amnesty for illegals who are already here that he reportedly promised to them last week? He doesn’t want to seem too eager about all of this with the midterms four months away; that’s why he’s asking for extra enforcement resources, to show low-information voters that he cares about border security at a moment when they’re nervous about a new wave of illegal crossings. If he suddenly turns around and pulls a double whammy, resisting summary deportation for kids and issuing an executive order that amnestizes five million adults, he’ll demolish that perception. Presumably he’s planning to placate immigration groups now by going easy on young illegals while holding off on the big amnesty until next year, when there’s less to lose politically and more to gain for 2016.