Today, the Obama Administration, in an obvious attempt to boost the President’s flailing reelection campaign, announced that it would bypass Congress and rewrite the nation’s immigration laws.
The Obama administration will stop deporting and begin granting work permits to younger illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as children and have since led law-abiding lives. The election-year initiative addresses a top priority of an influential Latino electorate that has been vocal in its opposition to administration deportation policies.
The second sentence of the Associated Press story addresses the true impetus for the policy change; election-year politics. Obama, and today’s Democrat party, see the electorate as a patchwork-quilt of interest groups. Sprinkle enough goodies on certain blocks of voters and they believe they can put together just enough support to win. It can work to a point. But, when the pandering to specific groups undercuts one’s overarching narrative it can erode support in the overall electorate.
Obama’s policy change sends a clear message to Hispanic voters. It also sends a clear message to non-hispanic voters. Namely, Obama has just added millions of workers to the legal labor force. Millions of illegal immigrants will now be able to legally compete with Americans for the very few jobs available. This message will not be lost on working-class voters.
The media loves to obsess over GOP divisions on the immigration issue. What they fail to note, however, is the Democrats are equally divided. (A Breitbart award to the first reporter who goes to a union hall to get reaction to today’s policy change.)
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