Obama Misleads on Enforcement                                 

            The Obama Administration likes to claim that it is making great strides to secure the border and curtail illegal immigration. That is truly far from the case. The administration makes this false claim because it wants Americans to believe that illegal immigration is under control so that giving amnesty to illegal aliens now living in the U.S. won’t seem like such a bad idea.

            So what is false about the administration’s claim? Well, let’s take it from the top. By the admission of its own Department of Homeland Security, only 697 miles of our 1,969 mile border with Mexico are “effectively controlled.” That’s just 35 percent, which means that 65 percent is not “effectively controlled.”

Is President Obama concerned about this problem? Evidently he’s not, because in his recently announced budget he proposed a reduction of the Border Patrol by 180 agents. That budget also called for a substantial reduction in the Secure Border Initiative program which has funded construction of fences and other steps to make the border more secure.

And along with the administration’s apparent lack of concern about the border, it also fails to give proper attention to internal enforcement against illegal immigration. To cite another example from the budget, the president wants to reduce the US-VISIT program, which allows tracking of temporary visa holders to make sure that they leave the country.

From its beginning, the administration has undermined internal enforcement in a variety of ways. It ended the “no match” Social Security letters, which informed employers of workers who did not have valid Social Security numbers. This was an effective means to identify illegal aliens holding jobs. Furthermore, the administration has been lax on deporting criminal illegal aliens, i.e., illegals who have committed crimes other than breaking our immigration laws. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) that these deportations have declined 60 percent under Obama.

The administration claims that it is cracking down on employment of illegals by auditing businesses that appear to be hiring them. These audits have caused some businesses to terminate illegal workers, but the government is not deporting them. As a consequence they are free to stay in the U.S. and find other jobs—jobs that many unemployed Americans desperately need. This alleged “improvement” of enforcement is more for show than anything else.

Americans must be skeptical of just about everything the administration says about immigration. Its track record leaves us little other choice.