President Barack Obama knows his national amnesty is unpopular, White House spokesman Josh Earnest admitted Tuesday.
The president is acting because “it is the right thing do, not because the polls are telling him its an extra-popular thing all around the country,” he said after a reporter cited a Nov. 18 poll which showed 48 percent opposition and 38 percent support for the president’s planned policy.
The admission came at the tail-end of a press conference where Earnest tried to minimize the drama of the president’s unprecedented amnesty.
Back in 2006, Obama admitted that large-scale immigration is unpopular, but called for progressives to create an election-winning black-Latino alliance.
In his press conference, Earnest also hinted at splits within the Democratic Party.
Obama has invited 18 Democratic Senators and House members to the White House for a Wednesday evening talk about the planned amnesty. “There continues to be a couple of lingering policy decisions that have to get locked down,” he said. The Democrats “will have a robust opportunity [to debate] about the decisions he’s made,” he said, adding that “the vast majority of the decisions have been made.”
Most of the reporters at the event aided Earnest by asking numerous low-drama process questions about where and how the president will announce his plans. Earnest gladly answered the questions, and invited similar boring questions from the reporters.
The reporters also asked questions about complex legal issues, which Earnest cheerfully spent time talking about.
Only The Daily Caller asked Earnest a high-drama question about how the planned amnesty would help the 170 million Americans who are struggling to find or keep well-paid work in a flooded labor market.
Earnest ignored TheDC’s question, and no other reporter asked how the planned amnesty would help or hurt fellow Americans.
The closest question about the impact on people came from a reporter who asked how the amnesty would impact other illegals who were not eligible.
Obama and his aides are apparently trying to minimize the public’s recognition of the amnesty. He’s making a prime-TV presentation on Thursday, but did not ask three main networks to broadcast his speech. Only the Spanish-language Univision channel will broadcast Obama’s pitch.
The plan reportedly will offer work permits to at least three million illegals who already face minimal change of repatriation. The plan reportedly will also offer U.S. citizenship to 500,000 foreign professionals if they take jobs sought by debt-burdened U.S. graduates.
Since 2000, the median U.S. wage has remained flat.
The amnesty is a big risk for Obama and the Democratic Party, mostly because Americans strongly oppose Obama’s immigration policies by a ratio of three or four to one.
The November elections and polls shows that many voters, including Democratic base voters such as single women and Hispanics, would be much more likely to vote GOP if the GOP candidates place the interests of American workers above employers who want to hire more new migrants.
Public opposition likely will rise further if the GOP slams the amnesty as unfair to Americans. So far, GOP leaders only say the amnesty threatens cooperation between the White House and the GOP-led Congress in 2015.
So far, Sen. Jeff Sessions has led the opposition. “Apparently we now have an ‘Emperor of the United States,’” Sessions said in a Nov. 19 press statement.
“President Obama’s immigration order would provide illegal immigrants with the exact benefits Congress has repeatedly rejected: Social Security numbers, photo IDs and work permits—which will allow them to now take jobs directly from struggling Americans in every occupation. Congress must not allow this unconstitutional action,” said Sessions.