The Administration's Contempt For American and Lawful Immigrant Workers
Published on September 18th, 2012
For decades the opponents of border security and the effective enforcement of America's immigration laws have worked incessantly to obfuscate the truth where the significance of our immigration laws are concerned. Through their efforts the use of the term “alien” has been all but expunged from any discussion about immigration and replaced by the term “immigrant.” Consequently illegal aliens are now often inaccurately referred to as “Undocumented Immigrants.”
The net impact of this artful and deceitful use of language is to blur the distinction between what it is to be a lawful immigrant and an illegal alien, virtually making a mockery of the legal system under which more than 1.1 million lawful immigrants are admitted into the United States each year.
It is unfathomable that most journalists and politicians have blithely ignored how the administration's implementation of the program that largely parallels the DREAM Act, which Congress wisely voted down, would create millions of potential competitors for jobs that so many American and lawful immigrant workers desperately need to support themselves and their families.
Think what the implication is–the federal government is willing to reward aliens who violate the same laws that lawful immigrants abided by. Why on earth would anyone abide by those laws if they are not enforced?
Meanwhile American workers, including lawful immigrants who legally immigrated to the United States in a quest for their thin slice of the “American Dream,” having lost their jobs, find that they cannot support themselves and their families causing record numbers of them to now live below the poverty line.
Exacerbating this unprecedented situation is the administration's claimed use of “Prosecutorial Discretion” to provide what will ultimately be millions of illegal aliens with employment authorization, thereby adding insult to injury where desperate American workers are concerned.
Think of what this says to millions of lawful immigrants who played by the rules, followed America's laws and patiently waited on the bureaucratic line to avail themselves the opportunity to share the “American Dream” only to find that illegal aliens are now being rewarded for violating our immigration laws. Their reward of employment authorization also means that they now have as much right to take a job in the United States as do United States citizens and lawful immigrants making it more likely that American workers will not be able to find a job they desperately need and want! These illegal aliens now have a new “title” they are now competitors for jobs that are already in extremely short supply.
All the while, the focus of the discussions about the upcoming elections is on creating jobs!
Only a fool would not see through the false assertions made by the President when he claimed that he was rewarding “DREAMERS” who he described as children, and young kids. In fact, under the current program, illegal aliens are eligible provided that they had not yet attained the age of 31. The President claimed that his program would potentially benefit some 800,000 illegal aliens while the Pew Hispanic Center estimated that 1.4 million such individuals would potentially benefit from this program while the Migration Policy Institute claimed 1.8 million would benefit and some place the estimates as high as 3 or million!
Generally law enforcement agencies make use of prosecutorial discretion to marshal limited resources to address the most serious law violations. Perhaps the most egregious issue is the President's use of the term “Prosecutorial Discretion,” which I have come to refer to it as “Prosecutorial Deception.”
The President has claimed that since DHS has limited resources, he wanted those limited resources used most advantageously to go after the most serious alien criminals. The use of limited resources to focus on such criminals is a sensible approach. However, that is, most assuredly not what is being done by the administration. Rather than simply ignoring illegal aliens who are not seen as being dangerous criminals to focus resources on those aliens who pose the most serious threat to national security and community safety, the administration is committing huge resources to create a massive and costly program to provide these illegal aliens with employment authorization and official identity documents, even though there is no means to make certain that these aliens are who they say they are. This creates a huge national security risk for the United States and at the same time will likely cause aliens who have abided by the law to have to wait for their applications for immigration benefits to be processed.
How foolish and angry must this make lawful immigrants feel? What message does this send to those who aspire to come to the United States? Our immigration laws are likely to be the first laws that foreign nationals encounter–what a horrible first impression this creates.