GOP Hardliners Predict 2015 Amnesty

Since comprehensive immigration reform is likely dead in 2014, desperate-for-copy pro-amnesty journalists have turned their attention to 2015 when, they report, the chances for success might increase even if the GOP controls the Senate.

The somewhat tortured logic is that the House, which Republicans would still run, would have a negotiating partner it could trust in the GOP-led Senate. Familiar Republican amnesty advocates, California U.S. Rep. Jeff Denham and Florida U.S. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balert, sounded enthusiastic although it must be noted that both have incorrectly predicted many times during the last two years that immigration reform would pass. The quintessentially optimistic Rep. Luis Gutierrez thinks that any movement toward comprehensive legislation is improbable until 2016, at the earliest.

On and on, the pushing and plotting for immigration reform continue despite conditions on the ground which strongly argue against it. Amnesty would legalize 12 million aliens, grant them work permits and more than double work-authorized, overseas legal immigrants within the first decade after it became law.

Meanwhile, American workers are losing ground. A new Economic Policy Institute analysis of the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ July Job Openings and Labor Turnover report found that in July the number of job seekers was 2.1 times higher than the number of job openings: 9.7 million job seekers versus 4.7 million openings. EPI concluded that just over half the unemployed Americans were not going to find a job in July no matter what they did. In a strong market, the ratio of job openings to job seekers is 2:1, hardly the environment in which to legalize 12 million workers formerly unemployable because of their immigration status and import millions more.

President Obama may not wait until 2016 before he acts unilaterally. He’s promised to give an executive order amnesty that would also legalize millions of new workers. Please go to the CAPS’ Action Alert page here to send a message to Congress to block any potential presidential amnesty.