The only Americans who can legitimately object to immigration are native Indian-Americans, President Barack Obama told his Chicago audience Nov. 24, as he made an impassioned ideological plea for endless immigration, cultural diversity and a big government to manage the resulting multicultural society.
“There have been periods where the folks who were already here suddenly say, ‘Well, I don’t want those folks,’ even though the only people who have the right to say that are some Native Americans,” Obama said, rhetorically dismissing the right of 300 million actual Americans to decide who can live in their homeland.
Americans should not favor other Americans over foreigners, Obama demanded. “Sometimes we get attached to our particular tribe, our particular race, our particular religion, and then we start treating other folks differently… that, sometimes, has been a bottleneck to how we think about immigration,” he said in the face of many polls showing rising opposition to his immigration agenda.
Obama denied any moral or practical distinction between native-born Americans and future migrants. “Whether we cross the Atlantic, or the Pacific, or the Rio Grande, we all shared one thing, and that’s the hope that America would be the place where we could believe as we choose… and that the law would be enforced equally for everybody, regardless of what you look like or what your last name was,” said the president.
“That’s the ideal that binds us all together. That’s what’s at stake when we have conversations about immigration,” he declared.
Obama did indicate his approval for some measures to exclude illegal immigrants, even as he works to amnesty 12 million illegals stage-by-stage. His current amnesty “doesn’t apply to anyone who has come to this country recently, or might come illegally in the future, because borders do mean something,” he said.
In Japan, however, where the government allows little immigration, “they don’t have problems with certain folks being discriminated against because mostly everybody is Japanese,” Obama admitted.
Currently, one million immigrants are accepted each year. That inflow brings in roughly one immigrant for every four Americans who turn 18 each year, even though wages and the number of native-born Americans with jobs have both flatlined since 2000 amid increasing competition from migrants, stalled productivity, accelerating technology and changing trade patterns.
Obama’s speech was a defense of his Nov. 21 unilateral effort to roll back enforcement of immigration law.
That action freezes the enforcement of immigration law against 12 million illegals now in the country and also against every new migrant who makes it over the border. The edict also awards work-permits to roughly four million illegal immigrants, and puts them on a fast-track to citizenship. It also sharply increases the annual inflow of 650,000 guest workers for blue-collar and white-collar jobs sought by Americans. Obama’s speech did not mention the unpopular work permits or the fast-track to citizenship.
Numerous polls show Americans want to reduce or stabilize immigration, and also oppose Obama’s immigration policies by a factor of two-to-one, three-to-one or even four-to-one. On Nov. 4, 66 percent of Oregon’s voters —- including many Democratic voters — struck down a law granting drivers’ license to illegals.
In his Nov. 25 speech, Obama downplayed the existence and interests of native-born Americans as he championed the arrival of many non-English speaking students in Chicago schools. “Chicago has always been a city of immigrants, and that’s still true,” he declared, while adding that “you go to the public schools around here and you got 50, 60, 70 different languages being spoken.”
In fact, Chicago and the United States is overwhelmingly populated by native-born Americans who work, live and learn best in stable neighborhoods and classrooms. Nationwide, five out of six people in the U.S are are native-born.
More immigration “means more jobs, more growth for everybody,” Obama claimed.
But more jobs doesn’t mean more wages for Americans. Since 2000, median wages have stalled and the number of native-born Americans with jobs has remained flat amid the annual arrival of roughly one million legal immigrants, 650,000 guest workers and millions of illegals.
The award of work permits to four million illegals will provide more revenues for government, Obama said. But he ignored the likely $2 trillion cost of providing U.S. welfare and social services to the migrants, who average a 10th grade education.
The migrants “will boost wages for American-born workers,” he said, without mentioning that his aides estimated the increase to be worth only $170 per year for each working American, 10 years after his planned amnesty. That estimate is based on many assumptions, including claims that migrant workers will not usually compete against Americans for better jobs, and that the migrants will earn more money because of government intervention.
His forecast of a $170 per year gain claim also ignores evidence that more immigrant workers can swamp the labor market and drive down wages for Americans. That labor-supply reality is accepted by his top economic adviser.
But Obama was far more passionate when making his ideological argument for mass immigration.
Deportations of illegals who have children in the United States “breaks up families… it is heartbreaking, it is not right,” he said. “We’re not a nation that kicks out strivers… we find ways to welcome people, fellow human beings, children of God, into he fold, and harness their talents.”
The Statue of Liberty doesn’t have its back to the world, he said, trying to portray the monument as a colossal invitation to migrants. In fact, the statue was designed as a “Light to the World” that would show foreigners how Americans use their constitution and liberty to govern themselves without kings or emperors.
The many immigrants who arrive have to be treated equally under the law, Obama said, segueing into his progressive agenda.
“Sometimes that’s hard to do, and it is worthwhile, it is worth doing,” he said.
Obama’s praise for mass immigration reflects his long-standing belief that migrants can join with Africans-Americans, under the guidance of the progressives who run the Democratic Party, to win political power and wealth from Americans.
“In my mind, at least, the fates of black and brown were to be perpetually intertwined, the cornerstone of a coalition that could help America live up to its promise,” he wrote in his 2006 book, “The Audacity of Hope.”
That hope, however, was frustrated by economic competition between Americans and migrants, he wrote.
“The number of immigrants added to the labor force every year is of a magnitude not seen in this country for over a century,” Obama noted. “If this huge influx of mostly low-skill workers provides some benefits to the economy as a whole…. [but] it also threatens to depress further the wages of blue-collar Americans and put strains on an already overburdened safety net.”
