If you listen to President Obama and his supporters – most notably, main stream media correspondents – his executive amnesties are needed to prevent the deportation of non-priority illegal aliens. But as the term “non-priority” suggests, Obama had already made these illegal aliens safe from deportation. His real goal is to give them work permits, irrespective of how it endangers American workers or the constitutional underpinnings of the presidency itself. And that's why he must be stopped.
Upon introducing the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program in 2012, Obama marketed it as a measure that forgives children for their parents’ poor choice of coming to this country illegally. Of course we have no moral obligation to make up for that poor decision. But that aside, let’s look at what DACA does because it’s truly unrelated to the way it was marketed.
As noted above, DACA’s real goal is to hand out work permits to illegal aliens, not protect them from deportations the Obama Administration would never pursue. About 2 million people were eligible, but around 600,000 applied to date. With work permit in hand, the illegal aliens begain to compete with citizens for better jobs than they could have acquired working off the books. Some competitors are recent college graduates who have already had great difficulty finding good jobs. And let’s not forget that 18 million Americans want a full-time job but cannot find one.
DACA was marketed as benefitting just children but adults up to the age of 31 could apply initially. The applications provided a form of ID fraud amnesty because illegal aliens did not have to disclose if they previously used a fraudulent or stolen Social Security Number to obtain employment. It provided amnesty for the unscrupulous employers as well because the applications could be used for enforcement purposes.
DACA also was marketed as a means to educate illegal-alien children but they are not required to actually finish college. And it need not be college at all. Taking trade school or English as a Second language classes work just fine.
USCIS shortchanged legal immigrants in order to process DACA aliens. The New York Times reported that thousands of green card applications were delayed because USCIS shifted resources to processing DACA applicants. Lacking the resources to process so many, most applications were rubber-stamped. The Administration has not released information on the amount of fraud it encountered.
There is no constitutional authority for carrying out DACA but that didn’t stop the Administration. Deferred action prior to DACA was used sparingly and never with respect to whole categories of people. Obama actually said he did not have the authority to do this but later changed his mind for political reasons.
I would note that the president’s new executive amnesty expands DACA by moving up the entry date for qualifying from 2007 to 2010, removing the age cap so all can qualify and further reducing educational requirements. Most expect this to cause a surge of new applicants.
The other elements of the latest executive amnesty? It would extend deferred action to the parents of citizens and lawful permanent residents under what is laughingly the Deferred Action for Parental Accountability or DAPA program. So if illegal aliens had a child on U.S. soil, the parents would be eligible for a work permit and a three-year stay of deportation. This is expected to grant work permits to 4.5 million illegal aliens and enable them to compete better, middle class jobs.
The new amnesty further reduces the number of illegal aliens targeted for deportation. Keep in mind that prior Obama policy only targeted for deportation (1) serious criminals, (2) new illegal entrants, (3) those re-entering after a prior deportation and (4) those who absconded after a court deportation order. The new amnesty keeps the first two categories but safeguards those in categories three and four who re-entered, or were subject to a court order, after January 1, 2014.
The president’s unilateral action also would allow illegal-alien high-tech workers to stay in the country if their work "would yield a significant public economic benefit" and speed up visa processing for high-tech foreign workers. Both measures add job competition in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields where there is a surplus of workers, not a deficit as suggested by tech companies that want to hire cheap foreign labor.
Immigration policy should serve the interests of Americans and especially American workers, not special interests or the political agenda of certain politicians. The U-3 unemployment rate was 5.6% for December but that number is very deceiving for a number of reasons, including the increasing number of Americans not in the workforce. It also does not include marginally employed workers that want full-time jobs. The U-6 rate includes part-time workers and it’s hovering around 11.2%.
If we look at native- vs. foreign- born employment levels, natives have not caught with their pre-recession, 2007 levels. There were 1.5 million fewer native-born Americans over the age of 16 with a job in November of 2014 vs. November of 2007 even though the group’s population increased by 11 million. Over the same time frame, the number of foreign-born workers older than 16 increased by 2 million.
For many, the upcoming battle in the Senate over the DHS spending bill is about curtailing the president’s unconstitutional actions. But as Roy Beck has said it’s also about whether Americans will get the new jobs being created by the economy or whether millions of unlawfully present foreign workers will be given work permits to compete for the new jobs. Illegal aliens cannot currently apply for better new jobs created by law-abiding businesses. Obama's unilateral action would open every one of those jobs to illegal aliens and disenfranchise hundreds of thousands -- if not millions -- of Americans.
Of course taxpayers are vulnerable as well. The Heritage Foundation's Robert Rector estimates that illegal aliens who receive amnesty and work permits through Obama's executive actions will draw $2 trillion over their lifetimes in taxpayer-funded government services. Far from being a boon to tax coffers, most will end up drawing much more in benefits than they ever pay in taxes.
And the Center for Immigration Studies just released information obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests that shows the Administration issued 5.5 million new work permits to aliens over the last five years. These actions were implemented outside the limits set by Congress. FOIA information also shows that over 1,000 crimes were committed by criminal aliens released by the Obama administration in 2013.
Americans expect their elected Representatives and Senators to do their job. The House passed legislation necessary to curtail Obama’s unlawful, unilateral actions. Now it’s time for Senators to step up to the plate.
