White House: National Debate Needed Before Obama Amnesty

President Barack Obama wants a national debate on immigration, says his spokesman Josh Earnest.

The new call for a debate suggests that the president is abandoning — or at least delaying — his high-risk promise to Latino advocates that he would provide work permits to millions of illegal immigrants in the weeks before the election.

The president “wants to have a debate about the status of our immigration system, and what the consequences are for allowing a broken immigration to persist [and] what Republicans have done, or in this case, have not done, to try to confront that problem,” he said.

Supporters of greater immigration are increasingly worried Obama will ditch them at the altar. “Keep your promise, take action, be strong and have faith that leaning into this issue is the right thing to do – policy-wise and politically,” said a statement from Frank Sharry, one of the leading progressive advocates for increased immigration, and a founder of America’s Voice.

“Hanging back out of fear is what the Republicans want [and] taking action to address our broken and unjust immigration system is what the majority of Americans want,” Sharry claimed in an Aug. 29 midday statement.

Americans have been debating immigration for decades, and polls consistently show that Americans want to welcome immigrants, want fewer immigrants and oppose the use of short-term guest workers. Nonetheless, business groups and progressives have repeatedly used low-profile regulatory and administrative changes to sharply increase the supply of low-wage workers and Democratic-leaning citizens in the United States.

Earnest also hinted the president wants to make the Senate’s June 2013 immigration bill a major issue in the November election.

“The president wants to make sure the context of that debate is understood in that there is a reasonable, commonsense proposal that has already been passed in a bipartisan fashion through the Senate and would pass the House if House Republicans weren’t blocking it,” he said.

But the Senate bill is is problematic for Democrats. It would roughly double the inflow of foreign workers and immigrants to almost four million per year. That increase would annually provide companies with almost one new foreign worker for every 18-year-old Americans who enters the workforce. In its defense, the bill’s advocates say it would boost tax receipts, increase spending on border security and move the nation toward a national E-Verify system.

Roughly 12 million illegals are now living in the United States, with little fear of removal. Since 2009, Obama has reduced enforcement of immigration law, and in 2013, fewer than 0.5 percent of the illegals were repatriated for immigration violations.

Since House Republicans blocked the Senate bill, Obama has repeatedly promised advocates and business groups that he would unilaterally provide some sort of amnesty — complete with work-permits — to millions of the illegals by the end of summer.

Obama’s unilateral plan is being quietly opposed by Senate Democrats, partly because polls shows that few Americans want to see more foreign workers flood into the domestic labor market that is already glutted with unemployed, underemployed and poorly paid Americans.

Prior to this week, Obama’s officials have consistently said he wanted to implement the amnesty plan before the fall elections.

“The President has been pretty transparent about saying, look, by the end of the summer I’m going to consider a review that’s been conducted by the AG and the Secretary of Homeland Security, and I’m going to take what steps are within the confines of the law for me to mitigate some of problems that are posed by the broken immigration system,” Earnest said Aug. 4.

But Obama hinted Thursday that he would delay the amnesty plan. ”Our immigration system is broken and need to be fixed, and my preference continues to be that Congress act,” he said in a press conference.

“Hope springs eternal that after the midterm elections, they may act. In the meantime [before the election], what I’ve asked [Homeland Security Secretary] Jeh Johnson to do, is to look at what kind of executive authorities we have in order to make the system work better,” he stated.

In prior controversies, Obama has obscure his political retreat from unpopular policies by calling for debates.

For example, in 2013, when George Zimmerman was found innocent on charge of shooting Trayvon Martin, Obama called for others to engage in a national debate in lieu of him pushing unpopular federal intervention. When Obama backed away from his 2013 threats to bomb Syria, he called for Congress to debate whether nation should go to war in Syria.

According to a new Pew survey, Obama’s immigration policies have 31 percent approval and 61 percent disapproval. A late July poll by AP showed he had 18 percent strong approval, and 57 percent strong disapproval.

But continued debate is unlikely to shift public option towards Obama. Since 2007, progressives and business groups have spent at least $1.5 billion to overcome public opposition to cheap imported labor. Despite the spending, and cooperation from the media, progressives, and many top GOP politicians, public attitudes have become more pro-American since 2012.

Oh happy day---he wants a ntl debate (/snix). Does the WH ding-a-ling know ISIS is operating in Juarez? These new revelations are bound to impact the current debate about the border crisis and immigration policy.

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nro.online.com---Feds’ Issue Bulletin: Describes Threat of Imminent Terrorist Attack on Southern Border / By Andrew C. McCarthy

For those of us who’ve been raising alarms about both the jihadist threat and the national-security vulnerability created by the Obama administration’s non-enforcement of the immigration laws, this is not a surprise — particularly less than two weeks before September 11. But it is nonetheless jarring to read. Judicial Watch has just put out this statement:

Islamic terrorist groups are operating in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez and planning to attack the United States with car bombs or other vehicle born improvised explosive devices (VBIED). High-level federal law enforcement, intelligence and other sources have confirmed to Judicial Watch that a warning bulletin for an imminent terrorist attack on the border has been issued.

Agents across a number of Homeland Security, Justice and Defense agencies have all been placed on alert and instructed to aggressively work all possible leads and sources concerning this imminent terrorist threat.

The Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) is confirmed to now be operating in Juarez, a famously crime-infested narcotics hotbed situated across from El Paso, Texas. Violent crimes are so rampant in Juarez that the U.S. State Department has issued a number of travel warnings for anyone planning to go there. The last one was issued just a few days ago.

Intelligence officials have picked up radio talk and chatter indicating that the terrorist groups are going to “carry out an attack on the border,” according to one JW source. “It’s coming very soon,” according to this high-level source, who clearly identified the groups planning the plots as “ISIS and Al Qaeda.”

An attack is so imminent that the commanding general at Ft. Bliss, the U.S. Army post in El Paso, is being briefed, another source confirms. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) did not respond to multiple inquiries from Judicial Watch, both telephonic and in writing, about this information.

The disturbing inside intelligence comes on the heels of news reports revealing that U.S. intelligence has picked up increased chatter among Islamist terror networks approaching the 13th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

While these terrorists reportedly plan their attack just outside the U.S., President Obama admits that “we don’t have a strategy yet” to combat ISIS. “I don’t want to put the cart before the horse,” the commander-in-chief said this week during a White House press briefing. “I think what I’ve seen in some of the news reports suggest that folks are getting a little further ahead of what we’re at than what we currently are.”

The administration has also covered up, or at the very least downplayed, a serious epidemic of crime along the Mexican border even as heavily armed drug cartels have taken over portions of the region.

Judicial Watch has reported that the U.S. Border Patrol actually ordered officers to avoid the most crime-infested stretches because they’re “too dangerous” and patrolling them could result in an “international incident” of cross border shooting.

......who could forget the famous words of Obama’s first Homeland Security Secretary, Janet Napolitano; the southern border is “as secure as it has ever been”......

SOURCE http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/386694/judicial-watch-feds-bulletin-describes-threat-imminent-terrorist-attack-southern

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