by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
Tribune Media Services<\/p>\n
President Obama gave what was billed as an important speech on immigration last week near the border in El Paso, Texas. Unfortunately, it was one of the most demagogic moments in recent presidential history. Nearly everything Obama said was either factually incorrect or deliberately misleading.<\/p>\n
Why, 28 months into the Obama presidency, is there now a sudden push to pass “comprehensive” immigration reform? After all, from 2009 to early 2011, Obama had large Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate. Why hasn’t Obama already rammed through his own immigration bill, as he did with health care?<\/p>\n
The answer, of course, is that about 70 percent of the American people consistently poll against the president’s initiatives on illegal immigration. Obama simply did not want to sign an easily passable bill that would earn him further unpopularity.<\/p>\n
But now he has lost the House. A close re-election bid looms. The president is enjoying a sudden bounce in popularity after the capture of Osama bin Laden. He needs to firm up his base of Latino supporters. Presto: time to blame Republicans for his own past unwillingness to get a bill through his Democratic Congress.<\/p>\n
Obama’s demagoguery seemed to work on the crowd in El Paso. It interrupted the president’s speech to answer, “Tear it down,” when he mentioned the border fence. The audience booed, and jeered on cue, “They’re racist,” when he went after Republicans. And it joined Obama, the sudden cheerleader in chief, in chanting, “Yes, we can.”<\/p>\n
In blaming Republicans, Obama charged that their fears about open borders were groundless since, “The fence is now basically complete.” And to emphasize that claim, he mocked his opponents by saying, “Maybe they’ll need a moat. Maybe they’ll need alligators in the moat.”<\/p>\n
That sounds cute. But it is again quite untrue. The fence is most assuredly not “basically” complete. Currently, fewer than 700 miles of the more than 1,900-mile border have any sort of barrier. And less than 5 percent of the border has a secure double-fenced impediment. Even with increased patrols, a recent Government Accountability Office study found that 40 percent of the border is essentially open and unguarded. There are still well over a half-million illegal border crossings per year.<\/p>\n
In a fit of projection, the president also accused his opponents of politicking the issue for partisan advantage: “We’ve seen a lot of blame and a lot of politics and a lot of ugly rhetoric around immigration.”<\/p>\n
That too was a distortion for at least two reasons. One, during the 2010 midterm election, the president himself urged Latinos to “punish” their political “enemies.” That advice sure seemed like “ugly rhetoric.”<\/p>\n
And in the El Paso speech, the president rallied his listeners to go lobby for his proposals: “So I’m asking you to add your voices to this debate. You can sign up to help at whitehouse.gov.” Whipping up crowds to log onto his website seems just like “the usual Washington games” that Obama deplored in the speech.<\/p>\n
The president also deliberately confused legal and illegal immigration in lamenting the inability of highly skilled immigrants to obtain work visas and citizenship opportunities. But polls show wide support for legal immigration based on skill sets, not just on proximity to the border or family ties.<\/p>\n
What the president did not dare reveal was that to let in professionals and business people from around the world, based on their skills and earning potential, might also mean to curtail those without education and capital \u2014 in other words, to discourage the millions of illegal immigrants from Mexico who don’t speak English or have high school educations, and who often have little means of support but apparent political clout.<\/p>\n
Even when the president offered some sensible proposals about illegal aliens paying fines, applying formally for citizenship and learning English, he was still disingenuous. Obama deliberately floated these proposals to his partisan audience without any details of enforcement, since to do so would likely turn off the cheering crowd.<\/p>\n
So how exactly would Obama coerce some 11 million illegal aliens into paying a fine, returning to the immigration line to apply legally, or learning English? By threat of deportation or incarceration?<\/p>\n
The vast majority of the American public is not racist or “playing politics” in worrying about out-of-control illegal immigration. The enforcement of existing federal immigration law has become a joke. Drug violence in Mexico is destabilizing an entire country and spilling over the border. Jobs are scarce, with unemployment here still at 9 percent. Many billions of dollars in remittances to Mexico leave the American Southwest, often from illegal aliens who rely on American social services to make up the difference.<\/p>\n
These are serious issues that deserve more from a president than re-election pandering at the border and bad jokes about alligators and moats.<\/p>\n
\u00a92011 Tribune Media Services<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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Unfortunately, President Obama\u2019s unilateral plan to exempt millions of residents from federal immigration\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Political Culture"","block_context":{"text":"Political Culture","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/american-culture\/political-culture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"(John Gress\/Getty)","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/pic_giant_112714_SM_Barack-Obama-G-500x291.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2178,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/voting-present-on-illegal-immigration\/","url_meta":{"origin":3059,"position":1},"title":"Voting Present on Illegal Immigration","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 3, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Immigration activists and Hispanic groups are demanding that President Obama deliver on his promised comprehensive package of immigration reform. Already, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has derided federal sweeps of illegal aliens as \"un-American.\" And recently the Obama administration stripped the federal authority\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "November 2009"","block_context":{"text":"November 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/november-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7569,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-new-childrens-crusade\/","url_meta":{"origin":3059,"position":2},"title":"The New Children\u2019s Crusade","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 17, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Almost everything we are told about illegal immigration is both a lie and amoral. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online Sometime around 1212, mystics in Europe cooked up the idea that kids could part the seas, reach the Holy Land, reclaim Jerusalem, and convert the infidel Muslims. Thousands\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Mexico"","block_context":{"text":"Mexico","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/mexico\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1507,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obama-fails-to-square-the-illegal-immigration-circle\/","url_meta":{"origin":3059,"position":3},"title":"Obama Fails to Square the Illegal-Immigration Circle","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 11, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner There was very little new in the president\u2019s speech \u2014 certainly not his tired hope-and-change trope of blending legal and illegal immigration (\u201cThe scientific breakthroughs of Albert Einstein, the inventions of Nikola Tesla, the great ventures of Andrew Carnegie\u2019s U.S. Steel and Sergey Brin\u2019s\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "July 2010"","block_context":{"text":"July 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/july-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":959,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/please-a-little-honesty-about-illegal-immigration\/","url_meta":{"origin":3059,"position":4},"title":"Please, A Little Honesty about Illegal Immigration","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 20, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services President Barack Obama recently assured El Salvador that the United States would not deport the more than 200,000 Salvadorans residing illegally in the United States. 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