NOGALES, AZ - JULY 6: The border wall between the U.S. and Mexico is seen July 6, 2012 in Nogales, Arizona. The president-elect of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto, stated that he wants to expand his country's drug-war partnership with the United States but that he would not support the presence of armed American agents in Mexico. (Photo by Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images) (2012 Getty Images)
In the aftermath of the elections of 2012, the political pundits are providing their views, attempting to make sense of how, even with the incredibly low approval ratings, the majority of incumbents up for election in the Senate and those who ran for re-election in the House of Representatives won their respective elections. It was of great surprise for many that President Obama himself also won re-election.
Since Election Day, these pundits have been talking about how the Republican Party would have to do more to moderate its position on immigration and come up with compromises, in order to reach out to the minority communities to win their support in upcoming elections.
What is unfathomable is how providing millions of undocumented immigrants with pathways to citizenship can be referred to as a politically “moderate position” when the already existing legal immigration system enables more than 1.1 million immigrants to legally immigrate to the United States each and every year.
These same high profile commentators routinely toss phrases and accusations around when they are on camera, creating false and misleading impressions in the minds of their viewers. They refer to those who want America's borders secured against unlawful entry and immigration laws enforced from within the interior of the United States as being “Anti-Immigrant” and often link immigration law enforcement with racism and being “Anti-Latino.” This is an outrageous false claim that generates fears within an important ethnic community. In point of fact, effective enforcement of those laws can help save lives and jobs of American and lawful immigrants within the Latino and other ethnic immigrant communities.
They ignore that the same immigration laws that provide for the exclusion of immigrants whose presence is problematic and also provide for the removal (deportation) of immigrants who violate the immigration laws also provide for the lawful admission of tens of millions of nonimmigrant visitors each year and the lawful immigration of so many permanent resident immigrants each year who, upon attaining lawful immigrant status, are immediately placed on the pathway to United States citizenship.
What is unfathomable is how providing millions of undocumented immigrants with pathways to citizenship can be referred to as a politically “moderate position”
Transnational gangs pose a growing threat to America. They generally establish themselves in ethnic communities in which they feel most comfortable and are most easily able to achieve the goal of embedding themselves or “hiding in plain sight.” The most likely victims of their crimes are the immigrants who live within America's immigrant communities.
Title 8, United States Code, Section 1182 is a section of law contained within the Immigration and Nationality Act. It enumerates the various categories of immigrants who are to be excluded from the United States. Among them are immigrants who suffer dangerous communicable diseases, severe mental illness or are criminals, drug smugglers, human traffickers, terrorists and spies. Finally, immigrants who would seek to work illegally or become public charges are also to be kept out of the United States.
This section of law also contains another important set of provisions, to prevent the immigration of foreign workers to the United States if they will displace American workers or, at the least, adversely affect the wages and working conditions of American workers: This section of law, in part, states that immigrant visas must not be provided immigrant visas unless it has been certified that:
(1) There are not sufficient United States workers who are able, willing, qualified and available at the time of application for a visa and admission into the United States and at the place where the alien is to perform the work; and
(2) The employment of the immigrant will not adversely affect the wages and working conditions of United States workers similarly employed.
When compared with American and lawful immigrant workers, the only thing exceptional about foreign workers is that they will work for exceptionally low wages, often under dangerous, substandard conditions. This creates pressure on American and lawful immigrant workers to accept lower wages even though the immigration laws are supposed to prevent this.
When the President gave a speech in the White House Rose Garden on June 15th of this year, to announce how he would use “Prosecutorial Discretion” to provide undocumented immigrants with employment authorization, he certainly picked the appropriate venue to talk about his plan. Roses are beautiful, fragrant flowers. However, when you get too close, you risk getting hurt by the thorns.
The President's speech evoked emotions. Talking about children and the “American Dream” could certainly choke up the audience. Upon closer scrutiny, this program loses all of its appeal.
While President Obama spoke about children his executive order would purportedly assist, in point of fact, immigrants up to their 32nd birthday can participate. He failed to discuss how there are no resources to conduct field investigations to verify claims made in the applications. Indeed, there are no resources to even conduct face-to-face interviews.
Fraud will permeate this program, thus creating a national security nightmare, providing terrorists with ample opportunities to game this program to create a brand new identities.
Immigration amnesty programs such as the program initiated by executive order by the President circumvents the section of law noted above, that was enacted to protect American and lawful immigrant workers from unfair competition.
While it generally takes significant time and money to create jobs, the effective enforcement of the immigration laws can, nearly overnight, liberate jobs that are being sought by desperate American workers of every race and ethnicity who are struggling to support themselves and their families.
The Obama administration has repeatedly demonstrated that it is adamantly opposed to enforcing immigration laws to conduct meaningful numbers of investigations into employers who intentionally hire undocumented immigrants and to arrest and deport undocumented immigrants who are working illegally in the United States.
On January 26, 2011 I testified before a hearing that was conducted by the House Subcommittee on Immigration Policy and Enforcement. The subject for that hearing was "ICE Worksite Enforcement - Up to the Job?"
I provided prepared testimony for this hearing.
On November 1, 2012 the Washington Times published a report based on a recent study. The title of that newspaper report gets to the heart of the matter: “Two-thirds of jobs go to immigrants during Obama’s four years”
This report began with the following paragraph: “Two-thirds of those who have found employment under President Obama are immigrants, both legal and illegal, according to an analysis that suggests immigration has soaked up a large portion of what little job growth there has been over the past three years."
Incredibly, days before the election, the pundits claimed to be unable to understand how the unemployment rate had inched up from 7.8 percent to 7.9 percent even as roughly 180,000 new jobs had been created.
A significant part of the answer to the riddle that they could not (would not?) solve is that the Obama administration's program to provide DREAMers with employment authorization, coupled with the constant influx of lawful immigrants (an average of 100,000 per month) plus an unknown number of undocumented immigrants continues to flood the already overflowing labor pool with ever more workers.
The President claimed that 800,000 immigrants would likely participate in the program. The very same day he made that eloquent speech, the Pew Hispanic Center stated that their studies indicated that some 1.4 million immigrants would probably benefit from this program. Subsequent studies conducted by other organizations have pegged that number even higher.
With so many millions of American and lawful immigrant workers already unemployed or underemployed, it is hardly good news that now hundreds of thousands or, perhaps, millions of undocumented immigrants will be provided with equal standing in the labor pool- a pool that is already way overcrowded!
With post-election calls for compromise, it is vital that our leaders understand that while consensus-building requires the give and take of compromise, that our government must never ignore the true importance of America's borders and immigration laws that exist to protect lives and the livelihoods of American and lawful immigrant workers. Any action that circumvents the lawful immigration system will undoubtedly undermine and compromise national security and the dreams and aspirations of all Americans.
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