DURING THE presidential campaign, Barack Obama described his goal as fundamentally transforming the United States of America. This was usually understood as referring to such things as health care, energy policy, and foreign affairs. But it also includes immigration.
Although the issue has not received as much attention as some expected because of the dire state of the economy, among other reasons, President Obamas support for what advocates call comprehensive immigration reform - amnesty for illegal aliens, loose enforcement, and higher levels of future legal immigration - is not just another bullet item in a list of positions tailored to appeal to a group of voters. In the same way that critics of the presidents health-care reform proposals warned that they would lead to irreversible changes in the nature of American politics, the presidents immigration goals - effectively, open borders - would alter the political system itself, leading to inexorable growth in government and consequent constriction of personal liberties. In short, immigration is the health of the state.
There are two questions to explore here. First, what does the president really want regarding immigration? And second, if he does, in fact, favor what amounts to unrestricted immigration, what would be the political effects of such a policy? Let us start with the first.
THE IMMIGRATION AGENDA
In seeking to learn the real immigration goals of this administration, the presidents words arent necessarily a good place to start. As it has been noted in many other areas of policy, Obamas commitments come with a very short expiration date, so his broken promise to address the question of amnesty during the first year of his administration might suggest he wasnt sincere.
But that isnt the case. In the details of governing, we can discern the true priorities of this administration and its allies, and those are just what we thought. In both the administrative decisions made by Obamas executive departments and in the actual legislation introduced by Obamas allies in Congress, we see the familiar pattern - amnesty, loose enforcement, higher immigration.
No White House can change the immigration statutes on its own, of course. But the way it enforces, or doesnt enforce, immigration laws sends a very clear signal about its preferences. Perhaps the most important goal of immigration enforcement - even more than patrolling the borders - is turning off the magnet of jobs that attract most immigration lawbreakers in the first place. And in this area, Obama has moved very much in the wrong direction.
The effort to bar illegal aliens from employment took its first real step forward in 1986, when Congress passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act, which, for the first time, made it against the law to hire an illegal alien. Enforcement was desultory, because the real goal of the ban - called employer sanctions for short - was to get the amnesty passed through Congress. Once that happened, there was little political commitment to following through with enforcement. By 1999, Bill Clintons administration stopped even the limited enforcement that had been taking place, so that by 2004, under President George W. Bush (who was even more opposed to immigration enforcement than his predecessor), only three firms in the entire nation were fined for employing illegal aliens.
In the last year or two of its term, the Bush administration concluded that it had to at least put on a show of enforcement if its goal of amnesty was to be reached. This resulted in real increases in enforcement, including work site raids and prosecutions of both employers and illegal aliens.
But the trend has been reversed under this administration. Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, a former chairman of the House immigration subcommittee and one of the few genuine experts on the topic in Congress, has reported that work site enforcement has collapsed under Obama. In fiscal year 2009, compared with 2008, administrative arrests of illegal workers fell 68 percent, criminal arrests fell 60 percent, criminal indictments fell 58 percent, and criminal convictions fell 63 percent. The only reason they didnt drop even more was that the first part of that fiscal year was still during the Bush administration. Including the figures for fiscal year 2010 will show an even steeper decline.
The recent decline in the illegal population, from more than 12 million in 2007 to less than 11 million two years later, doesnt mean work site enforcement is no longer necessary. After all, even with the recession and the stepped-up enforcement in 2007 and 2008, there are still more than 7 million illegal aliens in the labor market. Despite that, Obama has suspended work site raids, ensuring that illegal aliens can continue at their illegal jobs without fear of arrest.
As an alternative to work site raids, the Obama administration is auditing the personnel records of some employers to make sure that the information presented by employees is valid. This has resulted in the firing of some workers who couldnt prove they were legal. But the administration is going to great lengths to ensure that no illegal immigrants are actually arrested by requiring agents to conduct the audits at night, so they wont run across any illegal aliens they might have to arrest.
Another aspect of the Obama administrations abandonment of work site enforcement of immigration laws is the cancellation of a proposed rule that would have encouraged employers to act on so-called no-match letters from the Social Security Administration. These letters are sent when employers submit employee information that doesnt match the agencys records (i.e., the name and Social Security number dont match because an illegal alien used a fake or stolen number to lie about being legal). Since the majority of illegal aliens work on the books, having perpetrated just this kind of identity fraud, the no-match process would have forced their employers to fire them, making continued illegal residence in the United States unsustainable for many. But that proposed rule was put in limbo when the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the AFL-CIO, and the ACLU joined forces in a lawsuit, delaying things until the Obama people came in and canceled the rule altogether.
This hostility to work site enforcement reached a low point when immigration agents stopped several van loads of illegal aliens in Massachusetts on their way to work. After taking some into custody, the agents not only released all of the other illegal aliens, they actually drove them the rest of the way to work.
Another sign of this administrations opposition to immigration enforcement is in the new limitations placed on detention of illegal aliens pending deportation. Detention of people in immigration proceedings is vital; unlike in the criminal justice system, where not showing up for a hearing has real consequences, a deportation order is all an illegal alien realistically faces, whether he shows up to immigration court or not. Although the law provides for imprisonment for aliens who fail to appear at their hearings, the likelihood of prosecution of someone who, like Obamas Aunt Zeituni Onyango, ignored an immigration hearing and deportation order but isnt involved in additional crimes, is infinitesimally small. Furthermore, those skipping their immigration hearings usually can avoid detection for many years, perhaps for the rest of their lives, given the authorities lackadaisical approach to tracking down immigration absconders.
To underline how important it is to detain people in immigration proceedings, consider that there are more than 500,000 illegal aliens whove been ordered to be deported but who have simply run off - because they werent detained.
