The Amnesty Bandwagon Rides Again
The public relations campaign for President Obama's latest revival of "immigration reform" makes one thing crystal clear: This is not, and never has been, about homeland security. This is not, and never has been, about economic security. It's about political security, plain and cynical.
In conjunction with Tuesday's renewed White House push in Texas for a "new pathway to citizenship" for millions of illegal immigrants, disgruntled Latino activists are ratcheting up their radical anti-enforcement rhetoric. Illinois Democratic Rep. Luis Gutierrez -- a persistent critic on Obama's left flank -- lambasted federal workplace enforcement raids this weekend. On Sunday, he repeated his hyperbolic attacks on homeland security agents "terrorizing" neighborhoods and ripping babies from the breasts of nursing moms. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano made no public effort to defend her employees.
On campuses across the country, unhappy ethnic college student groups have turned up the heat on Democrats to resurrect the "DREAM Act" nightmare for the 12th time in a decade. The legislation -- persistently rejected by a bipartisan majority on Capitol Hill -- would provide illegal aliens (not just teenagers, but students up to age 35) federal education access and benefits, plus a conditional pass from deportation and a special path toward green cards and U.S. citizenship for themselves and unlimited relatives.
Obama argues that his comprehensive amnesty plan would boost America's bottom line. But the open-borders math doesn't add up. The Congressional Budget Office score of the last DREAM Act package estimates that "the bill would increase projected deficits by more than $5 billion in at least one of the four consecutive 10-year periods starting in 2021." And that doesn't include the costs of the unlimited family members the millions of DREAM Act beneficiaries would be able to bring to the U.S. A separate cost analysis by the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Immigration Studies concluded that the illegal alien DREAM Act bailout would cost taxpayers $6.2 billion a year and "crowd out" U.S. students in the classroom.
To help gloss over those sobering realities and blur the lines between legal and illegal immigration, Obama summoned Latino celebrities such as actresses Eva Longoria and Rosario Dawson. The starlets -- deemed important "stakeholders" in the immigration policy debate by the celebrity in chief -- have served as glamorous distractions from the vocal complaints of Southwest governors, ranchers, farmers and other victims of continued border chaos. These are the real stakeholders whose lives and livelihoods are at risk. But none had a seat at the Hollywood-filled table.
While proudly emphasizing her ethnic loyalties, Dawson (an outspoken critic of Arizona's immigration enforcement law) insists immigration reform "isn't just a Mexican" or Latino issue. But for more candid liberal strategists, the illegal alien amnesty bandwagon is nothing more than a tool to motivate current and future Latinos to protect the Democrats' grip on power. Eliseo Medina, secretary treasurer of Obama's deep-pocketed backers at the Service Employees International Union, laid out the stakes in an interview with MSNBC:
"Clearly with immigration reform and any other kind of reform that would benefit the Latino community, we have to make sure that our voices are heard in the ballot box. There are approximately 23 million Latinos that are eligible to vote, yet only 10 million voted in 2008."
SEIU's goal: "If we increase the turnout from 10 million to anywhere between 12 and 15 million, we're going to have an outsized impact on the election in 2012."
If, as widely expected, Obama fails to deliver amnesty through the legislative process, there's always amnesty by executive fiat. White House insiders first floated the idea in June 2010 to unilaterally extend either deferred action or parole to millions of illegal aliens in the United States. This administration has accomplished its major policy agenda items through force, fiat and fraud. Immigration will be no different.
Unfortunately for the law-abiding, there is no Hollywood-Washington-Big Labor lobby to speak for them. While Obama's homeland security officials hang their "mission accomplished" banner over the border, the feds have barely made a dent in the three-year naturalization application backlog or the 400,000-deportation fugitive problem.
Meanwhile, law enforcement witnesses told a House subcommittee last month that border smuggling has grown so out of control that federal prosecutors are simply declining to pursue cases. Cochise County, Arizona, Sheriff Larry Dever testified about the feds' so-called "Turn Back South" policy -- which includes lowering thresholds for drug and smuggling prosecutions, and permitting border-crossers at least seven strikes before being charged with immigration misdemeanors. And just last week, the General Accounting Office reported another massive 1.6 million illegal visa overstayers backlog -- a problem exposed by five of the 19 September 11 hijackers who benefited from systemic failure to enforce visa regulations.
So much for "never forget."
Video: AZ Sheriff Paul Babeu’s Reaction to Obama’s Campaign Immigration Speech
Obama Picks Wrong Town to Give Immigration Speech
(Transcript of Obama’s El Paso Immigration Speech – Pushing the Dream Act Again)
THE PRESIDENT began his speech with: Hello, El Paso! (Applause.) Well, it is wonderful — wonderful to be back with all of you in the Lone Star State. (light... Applause.) Everything is bigger in Texas. (more light… Applause.) One has to wonder how happy he was to be there or how happy the State of Texas was to have him considering Obama just refused Texas any emergency aid after their fires!
By Fred Lucas - Photo by AP Graphics
President Barack Obama's commitment to providing some legal status for illegal aliens is reflected in the time he has spent focusing on the country's immigration laws in recent weeks, the White House said one day before the president is set to deliver a national address on immigration from El Paso, Texas.
El Paso is across the border from Juarez, Mexico, a city where 3,111 civilians were murdered last year--more than in all of Afghanistan.
In recent weeks, Obama met with current and former elected officials, business leaders and Hollywood celebrities - all whom agreed with his position on the matter - to promote comprehensive immigration reform.
Proponents call the proposal a "pathway to citizenship" for the roughly 12 million illegal aliens in the country; critics call it "amnesty."
“It will reflect his commitment to comprehensive immigration reform,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Monday. “We weren’t able to achieve it in the first part of the president’s term but it remains a priority of the president, even though it’s hard. He takes on hard things because he believes they’re important to get done. Hard things often need bipartisan support.”
“One thing I would note,” Carney continued, “is there was bipartisan support at the highest levels of the Republican Party – including the president, George W. Bush, including Sen. John McCain, the Republican Party’s nominee in 2008.”
The proposal has even less support today, however, with McCain and other Republicans having largely reversed themselves on the issue.
Obama is likely less concerned about pushing the proposal than about appealing to a political base in the lead up to his 2012 reelection campaign, says Bob Dane, spokesman for the Federation of Americans for Immigration Reform, a pro-border enforcement group.
“If Bush couldn’t get an amnesty bill passed, any bipartisan consensus for an amnesty bill now is not possible,” Dane told CNSNews.com.
Dane wondered why the president has only talked about the matter with people who already agree with him.
“Where are the true stakeholders in immigration policy – the American people?” he asked. “They will pay the cost for immigration policy, but they don’t have a seat at the table with the far-left, big business and special interests.”
Obama will visit El Paso Tuesday to deliver remarks about immigration reform, before traveling to Austin for two fundraising events for the Democratic National Committee.
El Paso is one of nine Border Patrol sectors along the almost 2,000-mile-long U.S.-Mexico border, running from the Gulf Coast to the Pacific Ocean. Located directly across from the Mexican city of Juarez, it has been among the more dangerous border areas in recent years.
Carney declined to say whether Obama would raise any new aspects during the visit. He did indicate that “border security” would be on the agenda – but “not border security alone.”
“The number of border agents today is double what it was in 2004,” he said. “We’ve got triple the number of intelligence analysts working the boarder. We’ve deployed unmanned aerial vehicles that now patrol the border from Texas to California. We are screening 100 percent of southbound rail shipments to seize guns and money going south, even as we go after drugs coming north.”
Carney also stressed the economic impact of immigration.
“It is simply foolish as a matter of policy when we think about global competition, economic competition that we face in the 21st Century, to educate some of the smartest, most creative entrepreneurial young people from around the world in our universities, the finest in the world, and then not let them stay and start businesses to launch startups, to create jobs in America,” he said.
“[New York] Mayor [Michael] Bloomberg noted this fact – in recent years over 25 percent of high tech startups in the United States were founded by immigrants. We’ve been deporting 50,000 jobs.”
Obama Claims Border Fence ‘Basically Complete’ But It’s Only 5% Finished
Arizona Seeks Online Donations to Complete Border Fence - Gov. Jan Brewer recently signed a bill that sets the state on a course that begins with launching a website to raise money for the work.
Video: Herman Cain - We Need to Secure the Border With Technology and Guns
Obama Mocks GOP for Wanting to Secure America’s Border
SEND THE NAVY SEALS TO D C FIRST AND CLEAN THAT CESS POOL UP , THEN SEND THEM TO PROTECT OUR BORDERS !!!!!!!!!!
Thanks to Townhall for the Cartoon!
No comments:
Post a Comment