A couple weeks ago on the Daily Show, Jon Stewart did a bit satirizing the rightwing narrative that says Obama has often acted like a moderate or even a conservative President in order to lull voters into electing him for a second term, when he'll take off his moderate mask and turn America into a socialist nation!
You know the story: Even though the Obama administration has not introduced any new restrictions on the Second Amendment, and has in fact signed laws permitting weapons in National Parks, the NRA's Wayne LaPierre says it's all a canard, a scam, to trick us into electing him again -- then watch out! The NRA fear-mongering rhetoric is partially responsible for the dramatic rise in gun sales during Obama's tenure. After all, if he wins in 2012, by next year you probably won't be able to buy a water pistol. What horsepuckey.
Stewart also riffed on the President's killing of Osama bin Laden, which again is just a ploy to convince us he's not really a secret Muslim. Just wait till his second term! And, of course, Stewart brings up the President's immigration policy.
In case you haven't noticed, the Obama administration has sent twice as many Border Patrol agents and National Guard troops to the region than President Bush ever did. One result, coupled with the economic collapse, is that border crossings and crime are down considerably -- as much as 40 percent in the Tucson region.
Funny, when a white Republican previously occupied the White House, you didn't hear Jan Brewer and Joe Arpaio screeching that we are being overrun with hordes of brown people. Nor were they flailing away at the federal government for "not protecting us," even though during the BushCo regime there were fewer border agents, more immigrant crossings, and not nearly as many deportations. In its first three years the Obama administration deported more than one million people; in Bush's two full terms he sent packing less than 1.6 million.
The GOP's take on these numbers, says Jon Stewart, is that Obama is only trying to lull us into complacency. After 2012, he'll tear down the border fences and declare amnesty! Well, in a story yesterday, the Daily Show bit comes to life.
The Arizona Republic's Daniel Gonzales reported Wednesday that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has issued a report on the number of deportees who are the parents of children born in America (ergo: US citizens), the first time they've released such statistics:
During the first six months of last year, the federal government deported more than 46,000 parents who claimed their children are U.S. citizens, according to a new report that has raised concerns about what happens to children after their parents are expelled. Arizona Republic
The alarmingly high number should be a concern, given the thousands of children left behind without parents, and in fact the Congressional Hispanic Caucus said the deportation policy is ripping families apart:
"This report is the latest example of the terrible toll our broken immigration system is taking on families," U.S. Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard, D-Calif., said in a prepared statement. She requested the report. "We can't continue to claim to value families while deporting parents in the tens of thousands."
In her response, DHS Secretary Napolitano acknowledged the familial problem, but pointed out that many deportations took place before the administration had enacted a
new ICE policy, which focuses on only sending back immigrants convicted of crimes:
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Wednesday that she was concerned about U.S.-citizen children whose parents have been deported. But she said the government has increased its emphasis on deporting immigrants with criminal convictions, and the majority of the parent deportations fell into that category.
One problem, as immigration lawyer Gerald Burns points out, is that most of the cases he's worked on involve
minor offenses, like someone didn't fill out their paperwork correctly. Unquestionably, this'll be an election year topic for the President when it comes to his support among Hispanics, which remains high. But notice how yesterday's story was greeted by rightwing, anti-immigrant doofuses:
Point 1:
Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington, D.C., research organization that favors tougher immigration policies, said the deportation of large numbers of parents of U.S. citizen children is the result of the government's past failure to adequately enforce immigration laws.
First, Obama gets no credit, just like he gets no credit from the GOP for killing bin Laden, because the government was so woefully inept before that
any administration in 2012 would be seeing high deportations numbers.
Point 2:
Krikorian also said he believes the report was a political ploy aimed at gaining support for Obama's efforts to let more illegal immigrants remain in the United States through his new deportation policy in the short term and eventually through immigration reforms that would allow illegal immigrants to gain legal status.
There it is: This is just another Obama scam, a "political ploy" to trick us into thinking he's really
doing something about immigration. In the end, his first four years have just been a "short term" deception; in the President's second term, he'll push "illegal immigrants to gain legal status." Expect the DREAM Act on steroids!
The GOP lies about Obama's immigration policy just like they lie about the current economic uptick: "He didn't create the recession but he made it worse." Immigration is down, border crime has decreased, and deportations are up. But don't let that fool you, sez Arpaio and the other nativist butt-cracks: President Obama is about to unleash his pro-amnesty, pro-illegal immigrant agenda in 2013!