Obama’s Pre-Election Gift to Illegal Aliens

My article from today's Front Page Magazine:

Obama's Pre-Election Gift to Illegal Aliens

By Matthew Vadum

In a move more imperial than presidential, President Obama last week granted what amounts to a kind of de facto citizenship to as many as 1.4 million young illegal aliens.

From the Rose Garden of the White House on Friday Obama announced plans to bypass Congress and partially implement the so-called DREAM Act which would have offered a path to U.S. citizenship for youthful illegals who served in the armed forces or attended college. The administration says 800,000 illegal aliens could benefit although Jon Feere of the nonpartisan Center for Immigration Studies says the true number is closer to 1.4 million.

The cynical move came mere days before Obama was scheduled to speak at a major gathering of Hispanic activists in Florida.

Within hours of the announcement Obama’s reelection campaign sent out a mass email to supporters romanticizing this cohort of illegals as “Dreamers” who love America. These illegal aliens “should be able to dream as big as they want,” wrote Katherine Archuleta, national political director for the campaign.

The president said the new decree would take effect immediately in order to “lift the shadow of deportation from these young people.” Why this shadow needed to be lifted right now, while record unemployment levels plague the nation, was not explained.

“Let’s be clear, this is not amnesty, this is not immunity, this is not a path to citizenship, this is not a permanent fix,” Obama said. “This is the right thing to do.”

Of course the former constitutional law lecturer knows full well that any executive order that withholds prosecution for unlawful acts is by definition an amnesty, that is, an act of official forgiveness for past offenses.

Like all amnesties it rewards lawbreaking and serves as a flashing green light to would-be illegal immigrants, inviting them to jump the queue. Amnesties beget amnesties. Each one increases the likelihood that another immigration amnesty will follow in the future – and so on and so on and so on.

But whatever Obama may call his new order, there’s nothing anyone can do about the amnesty – for now.

“If the president says we’re not going to enforce the law, there’s really nothing anyone can do about it,” said University of Pennsylvania constitutional law professor Kermit Roosevelt. “It’s clearly a political calculation.”

Just last year when his slumping approval numbers were higher, President Obama didn’t seem to think he had the power to an end-run around Congress.

“The fact of the matter is there are laws on the books that I have to enforce. And I think there’s been a great disservice done to the cause of getting the DREAM Act passed and getting comprehensive immigration passed by perpetrating the notion that somehow, by myself, I can go and do these things. It’s just not true,” the president said in 2011.

But that was then. Now he has a presumptive Republican nominee to beat.

Obama’s policy, which has been repeatedly voted down in Congress, is the latest left-wing assault on the American system. After undermining America’s economy, national defense, and the rule of law in his tumultuous time in office, now Obama is trying to undermine respect for citizenship in order to shore up the Democratic Party’s sagging electoral fortunes.

After years of helping ACORN and other community organizing groups manufacture voters, now Obama is using the taxpayer-funded federal apparatus to do the same, betting that grateful illegals will be forever in debt to the Democratic Party. Not surprisingly, Obama’s attorney general, Eric Holder, has no interest in prosecuting voter fraud and ensuring the integrity of the ballot box.

No doubt some of the newly amnestied individuals will be voting in the upcoming election even though Obama’s policy doesn’t technically allow them to do so.

The Democrats’ cherished National Voter Registration Act has allowed many illegals to unofficially participate in the electoral process since President Clinton signed it into law in 1993. The so-called Motor-Voter law was envisioned by Marxists Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, who lobbied for it, as a way to swamp voter rolls with ineligible voters and encourage massive voter fraud.

The federal law requires that everyone applying for government benefits be given an opportunity to register to vote. Government workers processing claims for public benefits are prohibited from even asking applicants if they are U.S. citizens. Some illegals registered this way ended up voting.

Obama’s decree will give work permits to young undocumented aliens who can demonstrate they have been in the U.S. for at least five years, lack a criminal record, graduated from a U.S. high school, earned a GED, or served in the military.

“These are young people who study in our schools, they play in our neighborhoods, they’re friends with our kids, they pledge allegiance to our flag. They are Americans in their heart, in their minds, in every single way but one: on paper.”

The new policy is intended to help young people who are “talented, driven and patriotic,” Obama said.


Obama’s statement assumes a lot.


Only a leftist could say with a straight face that breaking the law by being in the U.S. without authorization, possibly engaging in identity fraud, and evading the police were “patriotic” acts.


As former INS official Michael Cutler wonders, “How could anyone know how talented, driven and patriotic millions of illegal aliens are whose true identities, backgrounds and affiliations are unknown and unknowable?”

It needs to be pointed out that many left-leaning lifelong American citizens don’t feel any particular loyalty to the United States. It stands to reason that someone who has been living in any country for a mere five years doesn’t necessarily feel loyalty to that country.

And according to studies, Mexican immigrants –legal and otherwise— who are likely to benefit disproportionately from the new amnesty, don’t easily blend into American society. Often they (and their children) self-identify as “Mexican” or “Mexican-American” into the fourth generation.

Now that the traditional American melting pot has been largely supplanted by multiculturalism and racial separatism pushed by race-baiting leftist groups such as National Council of La Raza, MEChA, League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) and state-level groups like the Hugo Chavez-funded CASA de Maryland, it is especially difficult to assume that those who will benefit from the amnesty are Americans in their hearts and minds, to use Obama’s phrase.

Many won’t want to assimilate at all.

And that’s just fine by the man in the Oval Office who wants to “fundamentally transform” America.