Posted on 05/09/2011 3:10:49 PM PDT by jazusamo
Washington (CNSNews.com) – President Barack Obama’s commitment to providing some legal status for illegal aliens is reflected in the time he has spent focusing on the country’s immigration laws in recent weeks, the White House said one day before the president is set to deliver a national address on immigration from El Paso, Texas.
In recent weeks, Obama met with current and former elected officials, business leaders and Hollywood celebrities – all whom agreed with his position on the matter – to promote comprehensive immigration reform.
Proponents call the proposal a “pathway to citizenship” for the roughly 12 million illegal aliens in the country; critics call it “amnesty.”
“It will reflect his commitment to comprehensive immigration reform,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Monday. “We weren’t able to achieve it in the first part of the president’s term but it remains a priority of the president, even though it’s hard. He takes on hard things because he believes they’re important to get done. Hard things often need bipartisan support.”
“One thing I would note,” Carney continued, “is there was bipartisan support at the highest levels of the Republican Party – including the president, George W. Bush, including Sen. John McCain, the Republican Party’s nominee in 2008.”
The proposal has even less support today, however, with McCain and other Republicans having largely reversed themselves on the issue.
Obama is likely less concerned about pushing the proposal than about appealing to a political base in the lead up to his 2012 reelection campaign, says Bob Dane, spokesman for the Federation of Americans for Immigration Reform, a pro-border enforcement group.
“If Bush couldn’t get an amnesty bill passed, any bipartisan consensus for an amnesty bill now is not possible,” Dane told CNSNews.com.
Dane wondered why the president has only talked about the matter with people who already agree with him.
“Where are the true stakeholders in immigration policy – the American people?” he asked. “They will pay the cost for immigration policy, but they don’t have a seat at the table with the far-left, big business and special interests.”
Obama will visit El Paso Tuesday to deliver remarks about immigration reform, before traveling to Austin for two fundraising events for the Democratic National Committee.
El Paso is one of nine Border Patrol sectors along the almost 2,000-mile-long U.S.-Mexico border, running from the Gulf Coast to the Pacific Ocean. Located directly across from the Mexican city of Juarez, it has been among the more dangerous border areas in recent years.
Carney declined to say whether Obama would raise any new aspects during the visit. He did indicate that “border security” would be on the agenda – but “not border security alone.”
“The number of border agents today is double what it was in 2004,” he said. “We’ve got triple the number of intelligence analysts working the boarder. We’ve deployed unmanned aerial vehicles that now patrol the border from Texas to California. We are screening 100 percent of southbound rail shipments to seize guns and money going south, even as we go after drugs coming north.”
Carney also stressed the economic impact of immigration.
“It is simply foolish as a matter of policy when we think about global competition, economic competition that we face in the 21st Century, to educate some of the smartest, most creative entrepreneurial young people from around the world in our universities, the finest in the world, and then not let them stay and start businesses to launch startups, to create jobs in America,” he said.
“[New York] Mayor [Michael] Bloomberg noted this fact – in recent years over 25 percent of high tech startups in the United States were founded by immigrants. We’ve been deporting 50,000 jobs.”
So what happens when their kids go to college and start looking for a real job?
Here come the Chinese.
Here’s a simple way to gain “legal status”. Hop out of the Border Patrol bus and march your happy ass across the bridge to Me-hee-ko. Instant “legal status”. See how easy that is?
Of the 1,563,000 bachelor’s degrees conferred in 2007–08, the greatest numbers of degrees were conferred in the fields of business (335,000); social sciences and history (167,000); health sciences (111,000); and education (103,000). At the master’s degree level, the greatest numbers of degrees were conferred in the fields of education (176,000) and business (156,000). At the doctor’s degree level, the greatest number of degrees were conferred in the fields of health professions and related clinical sciences (9,900); education (8,500); engineering (8,100); biological and biomedical sciences (6,900); psychology (5,300); and physical sciences (4,800).
In recent years, the numbers of bachelor’s degrees conferred have followed patterns that differed significantly by field of study. While the number of degrees conferred increased by 32 percent overall between 1997–98 and 2007–08, there was substantial variation among the different fields of study, as well as shifts in the patterns of change during this time period. The number of bachelor’s degrees conferred in the combined fields of engineering and engineering technologies was 4 percent higher in 2002–03 than in 1997–98 and rose 8 percent between 2002–03 and 2007–08. The number of engineering and engineering technologies degrees conferred in 2007–08 was about 12 percent higher than the number conferred in 1997–98. The number of degrees conferred in the health professions declined by 18 percent between 1997–98 and 2002–03, but then rose 56 percent between 2002–03 and 2007–08. Similarly, the number of degrees conferred in biological sciences decreased by 8 percent between 1997–98 and 2002–03, but then increased by 30 percent between 2002–03 and 2007–08; and the number conferred in the physical sciences declined by 7 percent between 1997–98 and 2002–03 but increased by 22 percent between 2002–03 and 2007–08. Some technical fields experienced a contrasting pattern. After an increase of 106 percent between 1997–98 and 2002–03, the number of degrees conferred in computer and information sciences decreased by 33 percent between 2002–03 and 2007–08. Other fields with sizable numbers of degrees (over 5,000) that showed increases of over 30 percent between 2002–03 and 2007–08 included security and protective services (54 percent) and parks, recreation, and leisure studies (40 percent).
http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=37
Do we really need degrees in Parks, Recreation and Leisure Studies?
Probably pick up a few votes on FR for this, too.
LOL! I'd bet a lot of those people are the ones looking for landscaping (lawn and yard work) right now with this economy. Those Liberal Arts degrees encompass a lot of job titles but they're still LA degrees.
Every time one of our politicians promises amnesty there is a new flood of illegals coming in to get in on it. Just what we need, more illegals.
There is also SSI, which doesn’t require any payment in, along with welfare...not to mention we will get to pay one way or another for the medical bills for these extended families. I hope someone has the numbers from the last amnesty that show how many were originally supposed to get amnesty and how many actually did- it was something like three times as many in the end. Even if we supported such a thing, how can we possibly afford it?
There’s a plan, or he could go camping in parts of Arizona’s public land that has essentially been turned over to smugglers.
There’s a plan, or he could go camping in parts of Arizona’s public land that has essentially been turned over to smugglers.
That is because many on FR do support amnesty and open borders...they used to come debate on these threads until they couldn’t stand the heat...now they just ignore those that want the laws enforced.
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