Yesterday Congressman Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) introduced legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives to reward the hordes of illegal aliens who made it past our Border Patrol Agents with legalization, jobs, public benefits and eventually the right to vote as citizens.
With the open borders lobby’s usual shameless contempt for the intellect of the American people, Gutierrez is calling his bill “Comprehensive Immigration Reform for America’s Security and Prosperity.”
The 2010 battle for repeating the “one-time” amnesty of 1986 has begun.
Don’t expect the legislation to receive nearly as much attention from the media as Tiger Woods’ love life. The hope is that we are too busy to remember that President Obama promised to deliver amnesty as part of his “Hope and Change” election campaign – or to consider that nagging detail about America’s raging unemployment crisis.
The contrived talking point is that legalizing the current batch of job thieves would result in a “boon to American workers” and somehow “strengthen our economy.”
I am not making this up.
America’s unemployment rate dipped from 10.2 percent in October to 10 percent in November. Many economists put the actual unemployment rate at 17 percent. Using the most positive figures, about 16 million Americans are out of work.
While monitoring CNN last week, I heard a reporter tell viewers that there are at least six applicants for each available job. One pundit puts it this way: “Unemployment isn’t just worse than Obama said it would be with the stimulus. It’s even worse than he said it would be without the stimulus.”
In addition to his recent “jobs summit” designed to get ideas on how to cut unemployment, the president has publicly promised to pursue “every additional and responsible step” to get America back to work.
Except, apparently, to stem the flow of illegal immigration and to remove the black market replacement labor from the workforce.
Obama could put about 8 million Americans in jobs next week if he would only enthusiastically enforce existing immigration and employment laws.
As a long-time American who studies the organized crime that is illegal immigration – which is directly related to U.S. unemployment (it is also directly related to national security, education, health care, public benefits, wasted tax dollars and the rule of law … but that is another column) – let me share some facts Gutierrez and Obama hope you will never see. You are supposed to believe the fairy tale that our borders have been secured.
The U.S. Border Patrol apprehended 556,040 new “undocumented workers” illegally crossing our borders in Fiscal Year 2009, which ended Sept. 30. Optimistic official estimates are one in four or five illegal alien border crossers are captured at the border.
Do the math.
Statistics from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement reveal significant drops in work site enforcement activity since last year. Administrative alien arrests (arrests of illegal aliens who will be placed into deportation proceedings) have dropped 68 percent. Nationwide, criminal arrests are down 60 percent, criminal indictments have fallen 58 percent and criminal convictions are down 63 percent.
Revealing his disregard for the American worker, Obama has rescinded the Bush administration’s common sense “No-Match Rule” in which the Social Security Administration sent letters to employers when employees’ names and Social Security numbers fail to match. The program required employers to take action – including termination – if notified that their employees did not have legal immigration status.
So much change … in only one year!
In a November press release reflecting the view of the majority of Americans, Georgia’s U.S. Sens. Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson criticized the Obama administration’s intent to push amnesty this way: “Americans want to work; rewarding illegal aliens with the right to hold jobs will not improve the chances Americans have of finding jobs, paying their mortgages, and feeding their families. Therefore, we strongly encourage you to cease any discussion about enacting a legalization program that will only hurt U.S. workers and make it harder for law abiding citizens to weather this economic downturn.”
There will never be a time when another amnesty is the answer, including in the current economic downturn and jobs shortage. The amnesty of 1986 actually increased illegal immigration and illegal employment.
It would have the same result today.
D.A. King of Marietta, a nationally recognized authority on illegal immigration, is president of the Cobb-based Dustin Inman Society. On the Web: www.TheDustinInmanSociety.org
