Obama Kicks Off The 2014 Election With A Campaign Speech On Immigration

Obama spent his first four years in office doing nothing to push legislation on immigration. Yet today, literally one day after a bipartisan group of Senators announced the framework for immigration reform legislation, Obama gave a speech in Law Vegas congratulating himself on his administration's successes of the past four years related to immigration and to quite magnanimously thank the Senators for adopting his ideas.

Obama's speech was a bid to get out in front of the Senators and claim credit for their legislative attempt at compromise. The bastard is just utterly shameless. Obama's speech was also the first campaign speech of the 2014 campaign. Obama may not be on the ballot, but this was his attempt to make sure Hispanics stay on the plantation in the midterms. Remember, Republicans are "the enemy" of Hispanics according to Obama, and the last thing he wants is them credited with doing anything that might change that narrative in the mind of Hispanics.

As to the specific contents of his speech:

During his speech, Obama plan outlined four major areas for reform, including strengthening border security, cracking down on the hiring of undocumented workers, providing a pathway to citizenship, and streamlining the immigration system.

While these areas dovetail with those laid out in the Senate blueprint, Obama's plan is significantly more liberal, particularly in regards to how it deals with the 11 million undocumented workers currently living in the U.S. While the Senators' compromise would make citizenship contingent on specific improvements in border security, the President has called for an unconditional path to legal citizenship.

That disagreement could be a major sticking point for Republicans, including Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), one of the members of the bipartisan group responsible for Monday's plan.

So far, Republican House Speaker John Boehner has offered little indication of whether it will consider a comprehensive immigration reform package.

"There are a lot of ideas about how best to fix our broken immigration system," Boehner spokesperson Brendan Buck said in response to Obama's speech Tuesday. "Any solution should be a bipartisan one, and we hope the President is careful not to drag the debate to the left and ultimately disrupt the difficult work that is ahead in the House and Senate.”

I will be amazed if Obama and the far left allow any sort of bipartisan compromise to go through on immigration. The last thing they want is to give up a wedge issue to the likes of Marco Rubio or, indeed, any Republican.

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Obama Folds On Immigration As Polls Sharply Support Arizona Law

AP is reporting that Obama has announced that immigration reform is off the table for 2010. For all the hyperventelating about the Arizona immigration reform bill in the left wing MSM, it would appear that the majority of people see things differently:

Seven in 10 U.S. adults support arresting people who can't prove they're in the United States legally, a poll about Arizona's new immigration law
indicated. . . .

Seventy-one percent of poll respondents said they'd support requiring their own police to determine people's U.S. status if there was "reasonable suspicion" the people were illegal immigrants, the poll found.

An equal percentage supported arresting those people if they couldn't prove they were legally in the United States.

Almost two-thirds, or 64 percent, said they believed immigration hurt the United States, with nearly six in 10, or 58 percent, saying illegal immigrants took jobs away from American workers, the poll found. . .

And as Instapundit observes, apparently the Democrats "own polls must have showed something similar. And with blue-collar dems facing layoffs and recession, and black dems not so hot on amnesty, there wasn’t any percentage in bucking the sentiment, I guess, even in terms of shoring up their own base."

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Pregnant, Illegal, & Crossing The Border

Congress has heard testimony estimating that more than two-thirds of all births in Los Angeles public hospitals, and more than half of all births in that city, and nearly 10 percent of all births in the nation in recent years, have been to illegal immigrant mothers.

George F. Will, A Birthright? Mabye Not, Townhall.com, 28 March 2010

While I am a strong proponent of a very liberal immigration policy, we have a real problem with illegal immigration that will require a change to our Constitutional interpretation to fix. As it is now, the 14th Amendment is being interpreted to provide that anyone born in America is automatically an American citizen, irrespective of whether they are born to people in this country legally. This provides a peverse incentive for pregnant illegals to enter America to give birth. And it is the subject of George Will's most recent columnn.

A simple reform would drain some scalding steam from immigration arguments that may soon again be at a roiling boil. It would bring the interpretation of the 14th Amendment into conformity with what the authors of its text intended, and with common sense, thereby removing an incentive for illegal immigration.

To end the practice of "birthright citizenship," all that is required is to correct the misinterpretation of that amendment's first sentence: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside." From these words has flowed the practice of conferring citizenship on children born here to illegal immigrants.

A parent from a poor country, writes professor Lino Graglia of the University of Texas law school, "can hardly do more for a child than make him or her an American citizen, entitled to all the advantages of the American welfare state." Therefore, "It is difficult to imagine a more irrational and self-defeating legal system than one which makes unauthorized entry into this country a criminal offense and simultaneously provides perhaps the greatest possible inducement to illegal entry." . . .

If those who wrote and ratified the 14th Amendment had imagined laws restricting immigration -- and had anticipated huge waves of illegal immigration -- is it reasonable to presume they would have wanted to provide the reward of citizenship to the children of the violators of those laws? Surely not.

. . . [T]here is no constitutional impediment to Congress ending the granting of birthright citizenship to persons whose presence here is "not only without the government's consent but in violation of its law."

Will's point is a very good one indeed. It should be the starting point for immigration reform. But it would seem that Obama's answer will be simply to offer complete amnesty to all illegals, the position supported by SEIU and La Raza.

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