OBAMA'S IMMIGRATION POLICY: THE WRONG THING TO DO -Part 1

WHY OBAMA’S IMMIGRATION POLICY IS 

THE WRONG THING TO DO,

UNJUST, AND UNFAIR

by Hugh Murray

            Earlier this year addressing an Hispanic group, President Obama was questioned about immigration reform.  The former professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard explained to his audience that he, by himself, could not change things.  There are three departments of government: the executive, legislative, and judicial, and the President simply could not act on his own concerning this issue.

On 15 June 2012 President Obama announced his change of the immigration policy regarding those who were brought here by others (presumably their parents) before they were 16, who are now under 30, who have no criminal records, who have a high school diploma or who have served in the armed services – they will no longer be deported.  Even though Obama, had only recently declared that even as President he did not have the power to do so, in June he proceeded to do just that.  The presumed Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, attacked Pres. Obama’s announcement as being political, and as being temporary rather than part of a general reform of immigration, but Romney did not denounce the new attempt at amnesty for illegal immigrants.

While Obama was openly declaring that he would not enforce the law already on the books, his Department of Justice was in court trying to prevent the State of Arizona from enforcing the federal immigration law that had been enacted by Congress and signed by a previous president.  Arizona had enacted a state law, not different from, but to supplement the federal law.  The main difference was Arizona planned to enforce the law.  The Federal Government had generally failed in implementing the law.  Now Obama declared he would not enforce the law!.  Worse, the US Supreme Court failed to uphold the Arizona law.  Justice Scalia, in dissent, said it boggled the mind that the court would not uphold Arizona’s attempt to enforce a law that the President openly refused to enforce.

However, my purpose here is not to expose the utter hypocrisy on immigration policy by President Obama.  Or that of Republican Mitt Romney.  My purpose is to reveal the long-term trend and its consequences.  And also to ask, how did we fall into this mess?  Did we stumble?  Or were we pushed?  

            What is totally neglected in the discussion is how Obama’s “amnesty” will discriminate against American citizens.

            Is it wrong to want the best for your children?  Is it wrong to prefer your family and your children to those of others?  To give to yours rather than to strangers?  To want yours to attend the best schools available?  To want a leg up for yours?  Is that wrong?  Or is that natural?  And good?

            According to the Obama Administration, some 800,000 young illegals will be “liberated” through his unilateral announcement.  The Pew Hispanic Center estimated the number at 1.4 million, with the vast majority Latinos, and about 70% of those coming from Mexico.  For the moment, assume that the total number covered by the President’s emancipation proclamation is one million, and 80% are Latinos.  Because they are Hispanic, they will receive affirmative-action (AA) preferences.  So when one of these illegals applies for university, they will receive an AA preference over an American-born citizen.  The President declares this is the right thing to do; it is just and fair.  And President Obama is an honorable man.

            When one of these illegals applies for a scholarship, they will receive an AA preference over an applicant who is an American-born citizen.  The President declares this is the right thing to do; it is just and fair.  And President Obama is an honorable man.  When one of these illegals applies for a job, they will receive an AA preference over an American-born citizen.  The President declares this is the right thing to do; it is just and fair.  And President Obama is an honorable man.  When one of these applies for a promotion, they will receive an AA preference over an American-born citizen.  The President declares this is the right thing to do; it is just and fair.  And President Obama is an honorable man.

            800,00 preferences over American citizens!  I think Obama’s policy is outrageous.  It is wrong.  Unjust.  Unfair.  The illegals not only move to the front of the line over thousands who have applied to immigrate legally.  The illegals also move to the front of the line ahead of American-born citizens in admission to university, in scholarships, in being hired, in being promoted, and in other ways.  This is scandalous!  The illegals here have broken the law.  And they will have advantages above American citizens who are law-abiding.  Obama’s policies are racist and discriminatory.  They are unjust, unfair, and he should be impeached for this act alone.

            Why has American policy turned so much against the majority of the American people?  Why does it favor foreigners above citizens?  Some may answer that Obama is not an American, he’s a Kenyan.  This misses the point.  Obama’s policy is quite similar to Republican Sen. Rubio’s.  It is not that different from that of Republican President Bush.  And Clinton, and President H. W. Bush.  And Republican Reagan amnestied millions when he was President – to solve the illegal alien problem.  Reagan only made the problem 11 million times worse.  Why have so many American Presidents followed policies that hurt the American people?

            After the American Civil War, in which more Americans were killed than in almost all the other American wars combined, a rocky peace followed.  There was still unrest, beatings, killings – in the West, settlers and troops against the Amerindians; in the South, Ku Klux against Republicans; in factories and mines, unions against owners and managers.  Nevertheless, American freedom and inventiveness brought about massive economic growth and improvement.  Britain was now being challenged for dominance, not only by traditional rival France, but by a newly united Germany and a reUnited States.  Yet, to many of the poor, the United States seemed to offer the best way to raise themselves with cheap lands to farm, jobs in ever newer industries, and various freedoms denied in other nations.  So immigration rose and grew to a million by 1900.  It remained high until the Great War of 1914  cut the ocean highway to Europe.  Suddenly, Americans were taking sides on the distant war, with many immigrants from Germany, Austo-Hungary, and Jews who hated the Czarist regime in Russia siding with the Central Powers.  Many others sided with Britain.  One English-speaking exception were the Irish, who had fled the British domination of the emerald island, and who were not interested in aiding the King’s forces.  On the other hand, President Wilson and the Eastern Establishment were pro-British, and when the Kaiser’s military and diplomats responded clumsily, eventually Wilson overcame the filibusters of the Mid-West and pushed America into war on the side of the British.

            Not only was Wilson a Progressive, who believed in a larger role of government, he was also something of a puritan.  To prevent the corruption of our boys in uniform, he sent federal troops to close down the Red Light district of New Orleans.  Because many of the early jazz musicians were earning a living playing in houses where jizz exploded, closing Storyville, meant jazz had to move to survive.  Thus, so many musicians left New Orleans for Chicago, Memphis, New York, etc.  The war required sacrifice.

            Criticism of the war could and did lead to prison.  Hatred of things German meant that some new immigrants quickly had to learn English.  Sour krout was cooked into liberty cabbage.  Even in Milwaukee, the German Club became the Wisconsin Club, the new Germania Building, the Liberty Building.  In New Jersey, a dachshund was stoned.  The Germans had their beer gardens and the Irish their taverns.  And both groups were now suspect as hyphenate Americans, un-Americans.  All the more reason to close their treasonable establishments.  The hatred of the Hun could turn into the hatred of liquor, and thus prepare the way for Prohibition.  (Also, as many young men were drafted, the Progressive interest in health and curtailing venereal disease led to circumcision as an American health measure – rounding up another example of American exceptionalism when compared to Europe.)

            With war’s end many Americans felt we had been duped into going to war.  And worse, a new international league with Britain’s Empire given many votes to only one for the US seemed yet another way to entangle us in Europe’s unending hatreds.  Immigration began to pick up again, but the old frontier had been closed.  The 48 states were no longer unpopulated territories.  America was filling up.  Perhaps, it should fill up with its own progeny, rather than millions of new immigrants.

            Even in the 1860s the Workers Party in California had demanded expulsion of Asian immigrants who were competing for jobs.  By 1900 the US and Japan had an agreement to prevent any more Japanese from coming.  By the 1920s, many Americans sought to keep America for themselves and their progeny.  There would be some immigration of course, but it would be to reflect and reinforce the population of the nation already here.  As most came from northern Europe, so too would most of the new immigrants according to the policy.  The new restrictive policy was endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan (Democrat Wilson had shown D W Griffith’s major film “Birth of a Nation” in the White House, and praised the pro-KKK message.  That film is often credited with causing the rebirth of the KKK).  But it was not only the Klan.  The AFL, the only major union at the time (the IWW had been anti-WWI and President Wilson destroyed that union, as he jailed Eugene Debs, leader of the major American railroad union and also candidate of the large American Socialist Party.  Debs was freed from prison by Republican President Harding.)  The AFL under Samuel Gompers saw an influx of new immigrants as competitors for jobs with American union men.  So the AFL sought to curtail immigration.  And it was curtailed in the 1920s, with a smaller number of legal immigrants based on quotas from mainly northern European lands.  Africans, Asians, Latin Americans would develop in their own ways, but in their own countries, not in the United States.

            In the depression era, both the Hoover and Roosevelt Administrations seemed incapable of restoring prosperity.  Some immigrants came, but finding no work, they returned to nations like Germany where another regime was producing jobs.  It may not have been as free, but “It’s the economy, stupid” as Democrats from another era phrased the sentiment.  Some in America even assumed that they might return to Europe and the new experiment occurring in the Soviet Union for a better life.  Of the many Finns who left America to return to Stalin’s workers paradise, almost all the men were executed.  Bottom line, there was little immigration to the US during the 1930s, and in some years more left than entered this nation.   War in the 1940s reduced immigration even more.  Even with refugees of the post-war period, it was still small in the late 40s and 50s. 

             Incomplete just now.  I will add more later.-----Hugh