Capitol Hill Chaos: Leak Reveals Obama Ready to Act on Immigration Next Week

By Joe Guzzardi
November 13, 2014

Despite warnings from House Speaker John Boehner, incoming Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell and three Gang of Eight sponsors to cease and desist from issuing his executive immigration order, President Obama is set to act as early as next week. Leaked information from the White House to Fox News indicated that Obama will release a 10-point plan that, among other objectives, will suspend deportation for at least 4.5 million illegal immigrants with American-born children.

Additionally, a half-million H-1B visa holders and their spouses would be given paths to citizenship. The deferred action for childhood arrivals (DACA) program Obama initiated in 2012 which allowed children younger than 17 who entered with their parents before June 2007 and were under 31 as of June 2012 would be expanded to include those who entered before they turned 16 and lower the age 31 cut off to 2010. The changes would make nearly 300,000 more aliens DACA-eligible. Finally, Obama proposes to end Secure Communities, an effective program designed to remove criminal aliens from the country. Obama’s proposed action awaits his final approval after he returns from the Far East.

Each of the newly legalized unlawful immigrants will get government-issued photo IDs, social security cards, and work permits even though more than 8 million Americans cannot find full time employment. They’ll compete in the job market with unemployed and under-employed Americans. Newly legalized immigrants will qualify for a host of costly, taxpayer subsidized benefits. In addition to free K-12 public education, they would be eligible for cash welfare payments and medical care. The federal government won’t perform background checks and therefore no one in the Department of Homeland Security can prove beyond doubt when an alien entered or under what circumstances.

Obama’s disastrous vision of immigration reform confirms the message the White House has repeatedly sent since the first day of his administration: the U.S. border with Mexico is wide open, the government refuses to meaningfully enforce immigration laws, and those who take advantage will eventually be given legal status.  Under Obama’s latest proposal, the administration rewards law breakers and mocks law-followers. Consequently, neither side respects the law.

Here’s a history lesson on the consequences of amnesty without enforcement. In 1986, President Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act that granted amnesty to nearly 3 million aliens. The promised enforcement never happened. As a result, in 2014 approximately 12 million illegal immigrants live in the U.S. Extrapolating, during the next two decades, more than 25 million aliens could come to America.  Border security and vigorous internal enforcement must be essential components of true reform.

Hope remains in some congressional quarters that Obama is floating a trial balloon to measure public resistance. Others in the GOP House will meet during the next few days to draft a short-term spending bill that would help defund Obama’s executive order. 

If Obama is  successful, the beneficiaries of his misguided and unconstitutional plan will be the millions removed from possible (but unlikely) deportation, the pro-immigration lobby that has literally spent billions since Obama’s inauguration agitating for amnesty, and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus that promotes identity politics instead of the common American good.

Citizens, 80 percent of whom rejected Obama’s definition of comprehensive immigration reform at the voting booth, and legal immigrants who respect the process, are on the sidelines watching the historic American nation’s slow but steady disappearance.

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Joe Guzzardi is a Californians for Population Stabilization Senior Writing Fellow whose columns have been nationally syndicated since 1987. Contact him at [email protected]