Since his presidential campaign days, Obama has had a stated policy objective of amnesty for most illegal immigrants residing in the U.S., except he calls the objective anything but amnesty – at times he or his supporters will even say it is not amnesty. As part of the deception, the the amnesty proposal is referred to as the “pay a fine and go to the back of the line” policy. Since the fine is small and the illegals would not have to leave our country and could eventually qualify for citizenship, the effect is indeed the same as an amnesty. The reason the Obama administration will not call this an amnesty is that an amnesty for most illegals would not be popular among many voters making it more difficult to achieve the Obama goal of getting Congress to approve an amnesty bill. As a consequence, the Obama administration officials are making cynical attempts to mislead voters about their immigration policies and objectives, including talking tough on immigration from time to time, all the while going even easier than the Bush administration on illegal immigration in terms of actions. Amnesty would be especially unpopular in today’s period of high unemployment when it is crystal clear that the illegals take jobs that Americans would want, even at low wages.
Voters also understand that an amnesty does nothing to stop future illegal immigration, and in fact, an amnesty actually encourages future illegal immigration by new immigrants who hope to fraudulently qualify for the new amnesty using false documents (easily purchased on the street) to prove earlier residency which never happened, and by those who come anticipating still another future amnesty that they will likely qualify for since it is now the established policy of the U.S. to have periodic amnesties for illegal immigrants. In addition, new immigrants are encouraged by the long-standing U.S. policy, carried even further by the Obama administration, of generally limiting deportations of illegals to those convicted of violent crimes. The latter policy along with liberal issuance of visas to visit the U.S. and no follow-up on visa overstays as well as no deterrent to repeated attempts to illegally cross the border has led to large-scale illegal immigration into the U.S. without limit from all corners of the earth. The immigrants continue to come as they are greatly attracted by all of the advantages of living in the U.S. in contrast to life in their home countries.
The Obama administration is proving that it is, and no doubt will continue to be, unwilling to effectively enforce our laws against illegal immigration. However, as noted above, the Obama administration wants to conceal its pro-immigrant intentions behind the deception of seemingly tough public stances on immigration. Its latest publicized example of this deception is the administration's attack on the corporate employers of illegal immigrants.
American Apparel, Inc., a Los Angeles company involved in the manufacture and sale of clothes was recently singled out as an employer of more than 1,500 illegal immigrants. However, unlike the token “immigration raids” of previous administrations, the new Obama approach did not result in the detention or prosecution of a single illegal immigrant! In other words, worst case for an illegal immigrant working at American Apparel is that he or she would have to find other work in the U.S.
This kinder approach seems to be part of an Obama plan to scale back the detention apparatus of the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement(ICE)and reserve the remanent for violent criminals only. By completely eliminating the recent very small possibility of any illegal immigrant being caught in a worksite raid, the Obama approach only reinforces the general impression among immigrants that our country regards illegal immigration itself as no crime at all, and that the only illegal immigrants required to leave the country are convicted criminals.
Indeed, this new Obama policy of giving "law-abiding" illegal immigrants a free pass while appearing tough on illegal immigration was recently confirmed in a New York Times article reporting on a speech of Janet Napolitano, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security which oversees immigration law enforcement through ICE. The last sentence of the New York Times article entitled "Napolitano Focuses on Immigration Enforcement," (August 12, 2009) states: "But Ms. Napolitano said she had shifted the emphasis away from arresting immigrants who have not broken other laws." Napolitano's deputy in charge of ICE, John Morton, echoed the new policy on August 17 when he said that ICE's fugitive operations teams would increasingly focus on finding immigrants with criminal backgrounds, as reported in Amy Taxin (Associated Press), "Feds drop deportation arrest quotas," Tribune (San Luis Obispo August 18, 2009).
Nearly all illegal immigrants who might lose a job through an employer crackdown would not return to their home countries. If they were able to obtain one of the scarce jobs in their native country, they would be paid far less and they would lose the benefits of living in the U.S. such as free quality health care and better free public education possibilities for their children. Thus to the extent that there is an effective crackdown on larger employers who are found to employ illegal immigrants on their books, illegal immigrants will migrate to smaller employers, independent contracting, and off the books work. These would be added to the estimated one-half of today’s illegal immigrants that are already working off the books at small employers or are working as independent contractors for purposes such as laborers, gardeners, nannies, or maids and therefore will not be reached by any employer crackdown. Both small-business employers and employees benefit from off the books work since various tax and other financial obligations can be avoided in this way by both employer and employee.
The government announced that it had sent notices to 652 U.S. companies, including American Apparel, Inc, which were suspected of employing illegal immigrants. It remains to be seen if there will be any follow through by the federal government involving the prosecution of employers of illegal immigrants and the forced firing of illegal immigrant employees. Even if there were an extensive follow through with employers, it would result in very few illegal immigrants actually leaving the country for the reasons cited above.
Going after employers would likely result in the prosecution of very few employers, as most illegal immigrants who are hired by larger employers present the employers with false documents or false information proving citizenship or the legal right to work in the United States. Even employers using today's federal E-Verify system may end up with large numbers of illegal immigrants on their books as noted in "Blame the Employers" from the Review and Outlook section of the July 16,2009 Wall Street Journal: "A bigger problem with the E-Verify system is that it doesn't catch identity fraud. An illegal alien using legitimate documents that don't belong to him can go undetected.... Several government raids on businesses in recent years (prior to the start of the Obama administration which has determined not to arrest any employees while pursuing employers of illegal immigrants) have resulted in the arrests of thousands of illegal workers whom E-Verify had approved." As part of its show of immigrant toughness, the Obama administration wants to make the use of E-Verify required for federal contractors, even though it is known that illegal immigrants can falsely qualify as hirable under today's E-Verify using the stolen identity and Social Security number of a citizen. Moreover, immigrants increasingly will know what they have to do in order to qualify under E-Verify.
While it is beneficial to deport criminal immigrants, it also must also be recognized that like the non-criminals turned back by the Border Patrol and ICE, with our porous borders many return to the United States and continue their criminal ways. Los Angeles County sheriff Lee Baca has testified before Congress that 70 percent of illegal immigrants in his county jails had been deported previously but returned to the United States are now accused of or have committed another crime.1
The scariest part of the kinder, gentler Obama immigration policy is that his "very wide open door for poor immigrants only" aspect2 is almost certain to continue as long as he is President whether or not an amnesty is passed by Congress. This despite the fact that there is no way a majority of our voters would agree to such a policy and the fact that such a policy would hinder the advancement of the poor in this country (see below the first blog entry of June 20 entitled Our Immigration Policies are Hurting Our Poor).
1 "House hearings on immigration provided insights," Daily Breeze (Torrance), July 13, 2006
2 In contrast to the poor, professionals in this country, such as computer programmers, have more political clout to use in order to help prevent the flooding of immigrant or guest worker competitors into our work force.
