Obama: Immigration Reform Must be Bipartisan Effort‎

Obama: Immigration Reform Must Be Bipartisan Effort


Leave it to a master politician like President Barack Obama to make the kinds of substantial, well-reasoned points on a topic as complex as the nation's broken immigration policy that won't amount to a hill of beans in the final analysis.

In his address yesterday at American University, the president struck the right balance between those who want to open the borders and provide amnesty for the 11 million undocumented residents here and those who want to begin mass deportations of all illegal residents wherever they are found.

Pleasing the open borders crew, Obama said that illegal immigrants are now so "intricately woven" in to the fabric of American life that even if deportations were possible, they would disrupt our economy.

And in a nod to anti-illegal immigration sympathizers, Obama said he has boosted border enforcement at the troubled southwest border to unprecedented levels in an effort to cut the flow of illegal residents from Mexico.

Obama said that the presence of 11-million undocumented immigrants in the United States "makes a mockery of all those who are going through the process of immigrating legally, adding that said illegal residents should admit they broke the law, register with the government, pay any fines and taxes and learn English.

"They must get right with the law before they can get in line and earn their citizenship," he said.




As usual, Obama struck the correct balance. But in the end what will it all mean? For several reasons, the answer to that question is nothing.


The reason most people come across the border is because they can get work that pays more than in their native land, but as long as businesses hire illegal residents because government policing of employees in most workplaces in so lax, the flow of job-seekers will continue.

If this government was serious about cutting the flow of illegal residents here, it would increase job site enforcement so that only legal residents could get employment. But just think about the manpower that exercise would entail.

Also there is little incentive for most members of Congress to take a stand and craft comprehensive immigration legislation. Its far easier to let the current system limp along and let some other lawmakers deal with it some day in the future - far in the future.


Obama said a lot in his immigration address. But in the end, I suspect, he will have said nothing because real immigration reform is nowhere on the horizon.

 

 

 

 



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