04/10/2009
Michael Graham reports from Boston
More than 10,000 lazy Americans — whose refusal to work is responsible for our current open-borders policies — crammed into a Manchester, NH job fair. Hundreds were turned away, and traffic to get in and out stretched for miles. The desperate search for work — any work — nearly forced local authorities to shut down the event.So obviously, it’s the perfect time for President Obama to throw open the doors for more illegal immigrants! What better way to fight unemployment among blue-collar American tradesmen than to give amnesty to crimmigrants who are taking those construction jobs?
Watch this video report from NECN, featuring people who walked three miles just to get to the job fair, and tell me that President Obama is right to ask these Americans to lose jobs to unfair competition from criminal immigrants working off the books. Explain to me why they should be forced to pay taxes for services to support illegal immigrants who violate our laws.
And just imagine how it felt to be these folks in Manchester and, while you're walking three miles just for the chance of a job, hear on your radio headset that President Obama has made that rewarding your illegal competition with amnesty is one of his highest priorities.
And it’s not just illegals north of the border that are the problem. There are still a lot of people south of it. Mickey Kaus writes
Will Obama’s New Legalization Push Screw American Workers? Or Has It Already Screwed Them? Both supporters and opponents of illegal immigrant legalization think trying to pass it "while the U.S. economy is mired in economic turmoil" might be difficult. The fear/expectation is that Americans will see the new law as a plan to allow foreigners who aren’t supposed to be here to compete for the few jobs that are left, bidding down wages in the process. But here’s the thing: Just by re-opening the legalization issue, without passing any new law, Obama has already encouraged foreigners who aren’t supposed to be here to come and compete for the few jobs that are left, bidding down wages in the process. What better way to encourage more illegal immigration than by promising a possible amnesty in the next few years?
This incentive is especially strong, actually, if immigrants (not unreasonably) think it really will take years to write and enact a legalization bill. Suppose, for example, that Congress passes a bill in the late summer of 2010. There will be a cutoff, of course--if you entered the country illegally after a certain date, you wouldn’t qualify for the amnesty. But what date? It if the bill doesn’t pass until mid- 2010 there’s a good chance that the cutoff date will be sometime around the end of 2009, if not later. (The last legalization plan, the "Z-Visa" debated in May of 2007, had a cutoff of January 1, 2007 .). That means if you are now in Mexico or Central America and you can make it across the border in the next few months, you're likely to qualify for legalization. The longer Congress takes, of course, and the sooner you come, the better the chance you'll have of beating the cutoff. Obama might as well print up leaflets that say
LEGALIZATION IS COMING. GET ACROSS THE RIO GRANDE NOW IF YOU WANT TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS OFFER!
It’s hard to believe Obama adviser Cecilia Munoz doesn’t realize reopening the amnesty issue could have this effect.
In any case, low-wage American workers don’t have to worry that Obama’s immigration proposals might make it harder for them to feed their families. Obama already made it a bit harder to feed their families, yesterday, just by letting Munoz and others bring up the subject. The damage--at least some of it--has been done. The lowest-paid Americans can now expect more low-wage jobs to go to illegal immigrant workers attracted by the very prospect that illegal immigrant legalization will succeed. …
Obama to Potential Illegals: Arrive Now, Get Legalized Later
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