06/12/2013
Barack Hussein Obama really outdid himself during his latest immigration speech. [Remarks by the President on Immigration Reform, June 11, 2013]. In almost every single speech he’s given on immigration, he concludes by giving a sob-story about an illegal alien honor student. However, in his latest speech, he bookended the speech with tearjerkers about two illegal aliens.
Before his speech began, illegal Nigerian alien Tolu Olubunmi gave her own story — she would be a successful engineer were it not for our mean immigrant laws. (Instead she’s a Senior Policy Analyst at the Center for Community Change, according to Linkedin.com, which is not my idea of “hiding in the shadows.”)
Obama began his speech by hugging Tolu, calling her courageous for speaking out "despite the risks” (there’s so much risk when the President is praising you and makes it policy not to deport you) and said she was “representative of so many DREAMers out there” and reminds us we are a “nation of immigrants.” [Video]He ended his speech with an even longer story about Diego Sanchez, another “DREAMer” who “feels American in every way — except one; on paper.” Diego is not just an honor student, but “student of the year.” (He’s a white Hispanic from Argentina.) Diego did not even know he was an illegal immigrant until high school, and wants to get a masters degree so he can go to law school so he can “pursue a career in public policy” and “help America shape its future.”
While the story of the illegal alien honor student has been trotted out by amnesty proponents for years, it seems like this has been the year of the Honor Student Surge.
I oppose the DREAM Act. Assuming these stories are true, they are not representative of the average DREAMer, and we already have too many lawyers and too few jobs and do not need another left-wing attorney taking up Affirmative Action spots.
However, it’s worth considering that the only illegal aliens who Obama and other pro-amnesty advocates ever bring up are the DREAMers, who make up only 5-15% of the illegal population.
Although the DREAMers are not as sympathetic as Obama and company pretend to make them, the fact that they take up half of his speech about immigration is an implicit concession that Americans have absolutely no sympathy for the 10 million+ non-DREAMer illegals.
DREAMers aside, the best Obama can say about illegals is that the “vast majority of these individuals aren’t looking for any trouble,” and are “looking to provide for their families.” Maybe, but this does not mean that they will not impose huge social and fiscal costs on our country.
With this in mind, I will address the three semi-substantive points that Obama made between his DREAMer fluff: border security, Amnesty, and legal immigration.
Obama’s main argument in favor of amnesty is not that the illegals are great, but because there our current “broken” system (he uses the term 10 times during the speech) gives “no credible way of dealing with the 11 million men and women who are in this country.”) Thus, the only solution is Amnesty — albeit with the usual phony hoops of back taxes (how do we know what they paid if they are “undocumented”), a penalty (which can and will be waived for “hardship”), and having to go to the “back of the line” for citizenship (but they will be living and working here legally while in “line.”)
Obama’s next point is that the bill will increase border security and the border is already secure. According to Obama, “illegal crossings are near their lowest level in decades.” But while a combination of tough state laws and a weak economy caused a decline in illegal border crossings in the past few years, since talk of Amnesty began this year, illegal border crossings are up 13%. [Illegal border crossings leap ahead of immigration bill, By Stephen Dinan, The Washington Times, April 10, 2013] Given that there is no cap on the number of illegals eligible for Amnesty and no way to tell how long an illegal has been in this country, that number will skyrocket if Amnesty passes.
Obama final point was about increasing legal immigration. He said we needed it to spur our economy. According to Obama 40% of all Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or the children of immigrants.
Obama’s speechwriters apparently took that factoid from a report by the Partnership for A New American Economy [The New American Fortune 500, June 2011 (pdf)]. Interestingly enough virtually every single one of these companies was founded by a European immigrant, with only a handful coming from Asia or the Middle East. Not one was founded by Hispanics who make the bulk of current immigration.
Obama also complains that our immigration system that “is so long and so cumbersome, so byzantine, that families end up being separated for years.” This begs the question why illegal immigrants who broke the law should be rewarded while legal immigrants are waiting patiently. More importantly, our immigration system is not “byzantine” or “cumbersome.” Rather, we simply have more people who would like to immigrate than the 1.1 million people we allow in the country. Significantly, Obama does not mention once in his speech that the bill nearly doubles legal immigration — something that only small minority of Americans support.
Following Obama’s speech, the Senate voted to begin “formal debate” on the Amnesty/ Immigration Surge bill by 82-15. The Democrats were unanimous and 30 “Schumer Republicans” — in Daniel Horowitz’ brilliant phrase — joined them.
The only possible explanation for this extraordinary GOP behavior: corruption — or a suicide wish.
"Washington Watcher" is an anonymous source Inside The Beltway
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