Last Week in Immigration: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

As usual on the immigration front, during the past few days Americans who care about the country’s future endured plenty of bad and ugly news with a smattering of good sprinkled in.

Here’s the latest outrage that proves how costly, especially to California, the nation’s flawed immigration laws are. Earlier last week, CAPS’ website led with the announcement from Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich that the latest Department of Public Social Services report showed more than $376 million in CalWORKs benefits and food stamps have been distributed through July to 60,000 illegal alien parents for their 100,000 native-born children.

In his statement, Antonvich said:

When you add the $550 million for public safety and nearly $500 million for healthcare, the total cost for illegal immigrants to county taxpayers exceeds $1.6 billion a year. These costs do not even include the hundreds of millions of dollars spent annually for education.

The estimated annual K-12 education cost for California’s immigrants is $10 billion.

Even though $1.6 billion to subsidize illegal immigration is a staggering cost to a single California county, a debate to end anchor baby citizenship is missing from Capitol Hill’s amnesty negotiations. Even though the United States and Canada are the only industrialized nations that recognize automatic birth citizenship, congressional bills requiring that at least one parent be either a native-born American or a legal immigrant to grant a newborn citizenship have not advanced.

More bad news:

• Immigration lobbyists and activists for amnesty will march on October 5 in major American cities. Those rallies will lead up to a larger Capitol Hill demonstration on October 8. Although activists have used political theater for more than a decade with nothing to show for it, patriots must be on high alert 24/7 for several days leading up to, the day of, and several days after the event ends to detect signs that Congress might be caving under the Hispanic lobby's pressure.

The Ugly:

• Seven aliens chained themselves to the White House fence and demanded that, among other things, President Obama stop deporting illegal immigrants. However, Obama, though prosecutorial discretion and deferred action for childhood arrivals, already is allowing for thousands of deportable aliens to remain.
• A Department of Homeland Security internal document revealed that pro-amnesty American extremists posed as illegal alien DREAMers crossed the border into Mexico, and then re-entered the United States. Their intent was to be detained by the border patrol and to later claim that the U.S. immigration system “is broken.”

The good:

• In a Telemundo interview, President Obama said that it is “not an option” for him to use an executive order to freeze deportations of parents of children brought to the United States illegally. Obama said that if he were to attempt to do so, it would be hard to legally defend.

The broad mainstream media coverage of the political theater surrounding immigration advocacy may turn out to be a positive. Headline stories with images of aliens being carted away from the White House in handcuffs, or protesting that their rights have been denied, raise eyebrows among most Americans. Even the Senate’s Gang of 8 Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said that lawless behavior will not help immigration advocates’ cause.

The next three weeks will be a nonstop, all-out effort by the pro-immigration lobby and could be the turning point in either direction. As Bette Davis said in her role as All About Eve’s Margo Channing, “Fasten your seat belts. It’s going to be a bumpy night.”