Obama spoke in El Paso on May 10, 2011. He really didn't lay out a plan; he simply spoke some crowd-pleasing platitudes and took shots at the GOP for not going along with him.
A common argument is the "nation of immigrants" concept. Who can argue with that?
Well, there was a time when we were inviting just about anyone to fill the prairie with a 40-acre farm. And a century ago we were looking for craftsmen and laborers to fuel the Industrial Revolution.
But this is what America looks like today (actually 2007, before the recession hit us):
Source Link: http://www.cis.org/articles/2007/back1007.html
Note the bottom line. There are 6.8 million illegal aliens working while we have 22.3 million unemployed adults with no college education plus 10.1 million unemployed teens. We may have an incentive problem, but we do not have a labor shortage.
From Obama's speech we hear:
"We define ourselves as a nation of immigrants -- a nation that welcomes those willing to embrace America’s ideals and America’s precepts."
Well, I would say embracing our ideals would include becoming a citizen, but only about a third of our foreign-born can be bothered with that step. And a third, the ones Obama is defending, are not in compliance with immigration laws.
Source Link: http://pewhispanic.org/files/reports/61.pdf
I struggle with the noble characterization of that group and gasp to see figures like that. When you factor in those who came here illegally but have since benefited from one amnesty program or another, half of the foreign-born living in the United States either are or were illegal aliens. Half! This is not a time for legalization; it is a time for enforcement.
And here's more shocking data. Look at the percentage of illegal aliens from our largest source of immigrants-Mexico:
Source Link: http://pewhispanic.org/files/reports/44.pdf
I'd like to think they are worthy of special consideration, but this data makes me feel like a doormat.
Let's not throw around the word "immigrant" without understanding how it is being used by the White House.
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