Immigration is energized by push-and-pull forces. For most immigrants entering the United States, the push is poverty in their homelands, while the pull is a better standard of living just across the border.
The Obama administration’s promises of universal healthcare, free education, social welfare benefits, economic entitlements, and immigration reform exert a powerful pull on immigrants — legal and illegal — from around the globe.
Many U.S. voters, including immigrants, cast their ballots for “change” in the November 2008 election. The current linkage of immigration to federal subsidies surely means “change” but not necessarily for the better.
Today citizens and noncitizens alike are awakening to the following broken promises:
- Immigration reform legislation has not been forthcoming as promised to Hispanic voters by Barack Obama in 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011.
- Obama’s billion-dollar stimulus packages not only failed to create promised jobs but added another $43 billion to the national debt, which translates to fewer jobs and fewer federal funds for immigrants.
- The Obamacare law, which more than half of Americans want repealed, threatens the solvency of Medicare by requiring that $500 billion be transferred from the program to fund Obamacare, which the president insisted will not be received by illegal aliens. Meanwhile many illegal aliens are benefiting from various health care programs funded by taxpaying citizens.
- Public education is being weakened by political correctness. Some grade schools have classes, even math, taught only in Spanish, and some schools require that Mexican studies be offered alongside U.S. history.
Where do educators and religious leaders stand on the linkage of immigration to health, education, and welfare? The online commentary, Politico, on May 24, 2011, carried an article by Miami Catholic Archbishop Thomas Wenski entitled, “Immigration reform must find balance.”
The Archbishop is concerned that state and local law enforcement agencies are being charged with immigration enforcement responsibilities. He criticized jurisdictions rather than states, such as Arizona, Georgia, Indiana, and Utah, for attempting to fill the federal immigration control void by conducting round-ups of illegal aliens that some are labeling racial profiling.
His contention that state governments “are also attempting to pass immigration laws that are inherently unconstitutional,” remains for the courts to decide.
The Archbishop’s assertion that states and local governments are ill-equipped to handle immigration policies effectively and humanely would be more convincing, if the United States had a federal immigration policy and was willing to enforce existing federal immigration laws.
It is the federal government that currently is ill-equipped to handle immigration matters effectively and humanely. Evidence includes the many lawsuits filed by civil rights and immigrant rights advocates against the United States.
The Archbishop criticizes the separation of immigrant families, many with U.S.-born anchor babies. He suggests that this is why such families do not cooperate or trust U.S. law enforcement. Yet he does not criticize those foreign nationals who could be entering the United States illegally to give birth and thus to avoid deportation by using their babies as mitigating factors.
By 2008, southern border hospital records suggested a nationwide total of some 4.8 million anchor babies. These anchor-baby U.S. citizens are allegedly being used to obtain federal entitlements.
Immigrant cooperation with the police is diminished, not by U.S. immigration laws, but by the presence of violent Mexican and Salvadorian drug cartels in every state of the union.
The president, during his visit to Texas, failed to meet with that state’s governor to discuss border control.
Instead he reiterated his support for the defeated DREAM Act (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors) and referred only briefly to the need for comprehensive immigration reform.
The Archbishop opposes any House of Representatives bill mandating expansion of the employment verification system that requires employers to check the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) E-Verify system. This system determines if a job applicant is qualified to be employed in the country.
Meanwhile, there are concerns about illegals crossing the border who are not Mexican, due to poor border security. The governor of Texas reports large numbers of foreign nationals from China, India, and various terror-sponsoring nations among those apprehended attempting to illegally enter the United States through Texas.
The president’s speech to the contrary, U.S. borders are not secure. Archbishop Wenski and other religious leaders who share his views are well-intentioned shepherds, but are they willing to stand by while the borders remain porous?
Two days after the Wenski article appeared, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed an Arizona licensing law requiring Arizona businesses to use the federal E-Verify program to assure that only documented persons are hired.
Such checks and balances keep our nation strong.
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