America's Deformed Immigration Reform

I strenuously object to  President Obama's plans to grant amnesty to illegal immigrants residing in the U.S; For that matter I am against such leniency towards these gate crashers under any circumstances. Why should these people be rewarded for flagrantly making a mockery of the American legal system? Giving in this way  and especially considering a pathway to citizenship for them as well is a slap in the face of LEGAL immigrants who have waited years for a visa to enter the U,S, abided by laws of the U.S. and still must wait more years before being naturalized.

Further inflaming the matter is the politically correct propaganda disseminated by advocates for the illegals and their "rights"(!). These supporters have deliberately and unscrupulously confused the issue by referring to undocumented aliens simply as "immigrants" thus conflating them with those aliens who entered the U.S. by the book. This false label distorts the issue and makes those who oppose the presence in America of the  lawbreakers as being against all immigration. Nothing could be further from the truth. Foreigners in America whose visa status allows them to be there are welcome and should not be considered  part of the problem at hand.   

But beyond ethical and moral considerations, there are practical repercussions as well. The economic status of the American worker has been eroding for decades. And  employment and salaries for the American labor force have never fully recovered from the economic crash in 2008 (the jobs are supposedly back but not the previous wages). Flooding the  workforce with five million  more workers, most of whom are low and unskilled, will likely drag down job openings and  the wage scale for U.S. workers as a whole even further. If the border crashers are in the U.S. due to economic hardship in their native countries, especially Mexico and other parts of Latin America, where is it written that the U.S.  has to act as safety valve for the economies of those countries?  The governments of those places need to clean up their act and  start instituting socioeconomic reforms instead of sending their surplus populations, including unaccompanied minors who put a strain on American social services, to el norte .

Even if the pending amnesty applies only to those illegals who have been in the U.S. for a certain number of years, it will only encourage more border crashers to enter the country, hoping that they too will also eventually be allowed to stay. For those who don't remember,  there was a previous amnesty in 1986  (under a Republican administration that time) after which there were  supposed to be employer verification of job applicants' legal status to work in the U.S. and tighter borders. These never really happened because of lax enforcement. This time around I don't even find a pretense of such restrictions in  Obama's blanket amnesty proposal.

I also find it infuriating that just like in 1986 legal immigrants (disclosure: one of whom was my wife),   are being unjustly  left out of the picture. If the President  is so gung-ho on letting  undocumented aliens  stay in the U.S., then in all fairness, his executive order should also offer immediate citizenship to qualified immigrant permanent residents in the U.S.  But instead just like 28 years ago, legal aliens will get wind up receiving NOTHING but the frustration of seeing illegals getting preferential treatment. What else would you call it when the latter will receive the  permission to remain in the U.S. for which their legal alien counterparts had to apply and wait, often as previously noted for many years?   How betrayed and foolish they must feel. So the message is clear: Sneak into the country, bide your time, and you will eventually be home free.

In effect, America has lost control of its borders, and the resulting implications for the country's security are ominous. What a sorry state of affairs.