President Obama Favors Illegal Immigrants Over Unemployed Americans

Last week the Obama administration announced that illegal immigrants who had committed crimes (besides entering the country illegally, committing tax fraud, etc.) would be the primary focus of its deportation efforts. Although the administration was trying to sound like it was being tough on criminals, it was really admitting that the enforcement of existing immigration law was no longer one of its priorities. Because the Obama administration has either been unable or unwilling to make our borders more secure, a number of states have passed laws trying to halt the flow of illegal immigrants into the United States. Time and time again we've heard the same response to these laws from the Obama administration: immigration law enforcement is the sole responsibility of the federal government. The problem with that argument is that the only reason that states have been passing these controversial anti-illegal immigration laws is that the federal government has neglected its responsibility. The Obama administration's argument was further weakened after last week's announcement when it effectively enacted much of the pro-illegal immigration law the Dream Act without Congress' consent. Congress has chosen not to pass the Dream Act because the majority of Americans still happen to believe that American citizenship is something that should be earned by law abiding foreigners who follow the rules governing the path to American citizenship, not something given away to those who willfully break our laws while enjoying the benefit of our tax-funded resources without actually paying their fair share of taxes. Although President Obama isn't the first President to neglect our border security, he is the first to do it so blatantly for political gain. It's no secret that the Obama administration is courting the Latino vote in the next Presidential election, so its decision to reverse course on existing deportation cases and focus only on those that it labels as menaces to society is predictable. You won't hear an outcry from rank and file Democrats either because their hope is that as the Latino vote gains more power through illegal immigration, these future citizens will be a sure source of votes for the Democrat party, much like African Americans have been for so long. Many say that illegal immigrants only take up jobs that American citizens are unwilling to do, so we should welcome them even though by being here they are breaking our laws. It's not that American citizens are unwilling to do the jobs taken up by illegal immigrants, it's that most American workers are not willing to do those jobs for the same wages and lack of benefits that illegal immigrants are willing to accept. During these times of high unemployment, there are millions of Americans that would be happy to take back many of these jobs from illegal immigrants if the jobs paid a fair and legal wage and provided the most basic benefits. The belief that illegal immigrants are willing to work for extremely low wages can be misleading because many of them and the people who hire them often do not pay a wide range of taxes that the rest of us do, such as social security, state, federal and payroll taxes. When comparing the wages earned by illegal aliens to those earned by American citizens and immigrants working legally in the United States, we should look at after-tax incomes as opposed to the salary paid by the employer. Because many illegal immigrants are basically earning an after-tax income and their employers aren't paying their fair share of taxes either, the wages appear to be much less than they actually are when compared to the rest of us. To put it bluntly, these workers are able to work for relatively low wages because illegal immigrants and their employers are committing tax fraud. Another thing that is often ignored by those who say that illegal aliens are more willing to work at difficult low paying jobs than most Americans is that most of the jobs performed by illegal aliens are low skilled jobs that pay a relatively low wage no matter what country you happen to live in. Despite the low wages earned by illegal immigrants, they are able to send billions of dollars home each year to their families. Those are billions of dollars that would be spent here in the United States if they were being paid to the millions of unemployed Americans desperate to find jobs. If President Obama was serious about enforcing the immigration laws that he was elected to, the unemployment rate would be reduced substantially and those billions of dollars that were no longer being wired overseas would still be circulating in the American economy, creating even more jobs.