Lamar Smith’s bizarre legislative carnival side-show on Wednesday will probably overshadow an equally empty performance by Barack Obama earlier in the week. Addressing the National Council of La Raza, Obama claimed that his hands were tied for his comprehensive immigration reform—the most he would be able to do would be to advocate the passage of the DREAM Act again. A soiled bill that was taken from its effective and well-designed roots, and transformed into a “military force multiplier” by the Democratic sausage making machine, the law denies eligible students the core federal financial aid packages that have helped poor students go to school for generations. It will force far more young people into the military than schools, and will almost certainty force even those that could potentially enter college into the military in order to afford college.
While the DREAM Act remains popular, of course, with mainstream liberals and Democrats, it is still a far cry from the “comprehensive immigration reform” that Obama promised his Latino and liberal base in 2008. On the La Raza stage, Obama blamed his meager showing in that regard on the lack of a “dance partner” on the other side of the aisle. It’s true that the legislative spectacle of pretend immigration reform is a performance as Obama’s metaphor suggests. But behind the scenes, Democrat and Republican administration policies move with choreographed grace. Hidden by legislative dramas like the DREAM Act, and absurd spectacles such as the unctuous King hearings and the criminally stupid HALT bill, the real “immigration reform” program has continued unchanged, and indeed, has only increased from Bush administration to Obama administration. Obama, in fact, has reached highs that would make George W. Bush sigh with envy—400,000 deportations in 2010, a ten percent rise over Bush’s high score.
One way that Obama has accomplished this task has been by drafting state and local law enforcement as agents in shadow deportation programs. 287 (g) a program started under Bush, and continued under Obama, trains and deputizes local police as immigration agents, encouraging police officials to racially profile suspects. Secure Communities, which has also expanded under Obama, works in a similar but amplified fashion, turning all police into defacto deputy immigration agents. While the Department of Homeland Security sold the program to local law enforcement as one that would only deport the worst of the worst, screening out misdemeanor offenders, the Immigration Advocates Network reports that the number of misdemeanor offenders being deported through S-Com has risen from 27% through the year 2010, to 35% by May 2011. ICE under Obama has also nearly doubled its workplace audits, causing employers to fire workers for problems large and small with their I-9 forms; these audits doubled from 2009 to 2010.
Under both Bush and Obama, the Justice Department has also ramped up its prosecution of illegal entry as a felony charge. Obama increased felony re-entry charges over the Bush years by nearly 60%. Incredibly, these prosecutions accounted for 25% of all federal prosecutions in the first half of 2011. Felony Re-Entry has become, under Obama’s watch, the most prosecuted federal charge in the United States. Hard jail time for what was only a few years ago a misdemeanor offense that often carried no jail time—all for answering the continuing call for work that American businesses eagerly put out for undocumented laborers each year. And while the NSEERS program, which profiles residents with origins in Middle Eastern countries was terminated last year, thousands of people already caught up in its gears continue to face deportation, detention and denial of residency for failing to register.
Whatever one’s views on immigration, this set of ambitious deportation programs has repercussions for all Americans. S-Com creates a climate of fear in immigrant communities, where crime—especially domestic abuse—goes unreported for fear that undocumented loved ones or friends will be caught up in the deportation dragnet. The program puts serious roadblocks in effective policing, and creates tempting targets for criminals in no-go zones where the police will never be called. And even that isn’t the worst of the program, as document released under an FOIA request show that the FBI is involved in the program, and is using it as a test-run for a much wider program of bio-metric data collection targeted at citizens.
That isn’t all. As felony prosecution of immigrants grows, other justice department resources are used up and other crimes go unprosecuted. Prison populations, already bursting at the seams, will only grow, with felony re-entry cases sentenced to as much as fourteen months. Immigration detention centers and [their de facto counterparts in local jails] will also continue to fill; troubled enough already by unscrupulous for profit companies, they’ll become the site of increasing human rights abuses.
But the most insidious part of the increased deportation methods, is that carnie barkers like Smith actually make Obama appear to be under attack for pro-immigration positions and policies–what Smith has characterized as an obsessive compulsion to grant amnesty that Obama for some reason cannot resist. Smith’s HALT legislation, even if one were to accept it as a normative fix for immigration, would target a small minority of immigration cases where discretion is allowed. It is also an over-the-top attack on the mild adjustments ICE claims it will make to prosecutorial discretion in the “Morton memo”, which was a response to the indiscriminate dragnet created by S-Com. But the discretion, if it is, in fact, applied with greater frequency, is not “amnesty” or legalization, but merely a delay in the deportation process while supposedly more critical cases are prosecuted.
As racist, cruel and asinine as it appears, HALT would have little impact on immigration. Legislative spectacles, like the HALT act, continue to divide Americans along race and ethnic lines, providing no solutions for those who may have legitimate interest in providing sound controls on immigration, and antagonizing almost everybody else, especially people of color, documented residents and their families. More than just a spectacle, unfortunately, it is a gift to Obama, that will allow him to walk into 2012 with Latino and liberal votes in hand, even as he reigns over the most expansive and brutal deportation regime in decades.
Update: A recent poll of American Latinos shows the impact of Obama’s policies on those who know someone caught up in the deportation machine; versus those don’t, but do know, or are related to, someone who is undocumented. For the 25% of Latinos surveyed who know someone caught up in the deportation process, Obama’s approval rating drops to 35%, as opposed to Latinos who don’t know someone in the process–their approval rating mirrors the national White average at 52%.
Dave Francis
July 29, 2011
Those in Washington who are discussing discretionary spending and the debt ceiling and are already planning cutting funds from National Parks and National Monuments. Thousands of Post offices are on the condemned list and states are in an equal dilemma, having to cut-back on their State parks and recreation areas and many other agencies. The post 1986 Immigration Control or Reform Act, a bloody job killing amnesty, is still resonating today and will in our future years. And now the illegal immigration has spread like a virus, so we must congratulate Legislators who cleverly placed the blind fold over America’s eyes, completely ignoring the nightmare that was to come for us all. Millions of those itinerant foreigners began the Chain Migration horror that taxpayers are now paying for.When (Fair) analyzed the cost of illegal immigration and its nationwide deficit, they came up with a stunning figure of $113 billion dollars annually, while illegal alien revenue to the government coffers was a total amount of $13Billion dollars and change.
ACCORDING TO THE MEDIA, ILLEGAL ALIENS ARE LEAVING IN DROVES FROM ARIZONA. NEW ENFORCEMENT LAWS HAVE SENT THEM PACKING AS WELL IN ALABAMA AND GEORGIA. IF THEY STAY IN AMERICA AND DON’T HEAD HOME, YOU CAN BE SURE THEY WILL BE HEADING FOR THE SANCTUARY STATES OF CALIFORNIA AND NEVADA. IF THEY ARE ECONOMIC ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS, THEY WILL ALREADY BE FORAGING AROUND FOR WELFARE AND OTHER FREE ENTITLEMENTS.
Not included in these illegal foreign labor is wages leaving the country to foreign nations, estimated to be 46 Billion dollars.Our economy is sinking and the Obama administration is insisting on passage of another Amnesty failure. Heritage Foundation has stated that cost for processing , Social Security will have an expenditure of 2.5 Trillion dollars, when we are still arguing in Congress on raising our debt ceiling. Say NO to any Immigration Reform, that generates CHAIN MIGRATIONS. Say No to Sanctuary States and cities. Say No to the Dream Act, that will be another avenue of Chain Migration.
This grading of the Presidential Hopefuls is based entirely on their immigration positions. We know that voters support candidates based on any number of policy positions and personal attributes.
Currently, this is how the Hopefuls rate on immigration policy (from worst to mediocre best):
F-minus: Barack Obama
F: Ron Paul
F: Gary Johnson
F: Rick Santorum
D-minus: Newt Gingrich
D-minus: Jon Huntsman
D-minus: Rick Perry
D: Sarah Palin
D: Mitt Romney
C-minus: Herman Cain
C+: Tim Pawlenty
B-minus: Michele Bachmann
If you want the President of the United States to work for immigration policies that are good for Americans, you need to pressure the Hopefuls on this list to come up with much better platforms than they now have.
Attn: Be observant in the forthcoming elections, as immigrants and illegal aliens are voting. This is “Only” a citizens right! Go to NumbersUSA for the details.
Gator90
July 29, 2011
If it weren’t for Obama and Bachmann, I’d think those were college grade averages.
Jaime Omar Yassin
July 29, 2011
It saddens me that such stupidity exists.