Mass Amnesty Has President Caught Between a Rock and a Hard Place

If President Obama, and his filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and clear majority in the House of Representatives, moves forward on amnesty, the President will still want to give the appearance of bipartisanship. But the President's close relationship to organized labor, a major constituency of Democrats, may make enactment of amnesty very difficult.

In the past, organized labor has been divided over amnesty. Recently, the two factions have bridged the divide and have come together behind a proposal that includes amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants currently in the U.S. but which also creates a commission to determine how many foreign workers will be allowed to enter the U.S. in the future. The commission would be authorized to increase immigration levels as the economy grows and decrease immigration levels as the economy slows.

This proposal, which has not been received well by Republican Senators who have supported amnesty in the past, gives the unions everything they want. The unions get mass amnesty today, which will lead to more dues paying members in the short term, while deferring whether business has the ability to bring in competitive laborers in the future.

Overlooked however, including in this article, is that amnesty will allow millions of illegal aliens to take jobs away from U.S. residents during a worsening economy. Amnesty will give all sorts of benefits to lawbreaking illegal aliens at U.S. taxpayers' expense.

Instead of just talking about putting America back to work, Congress should enact real immigration enforcement to help Americans find work. America must enact immigration reform that doesn't reward criminal behavior. That plan must set border security and workplace enforcement as top priorities.

Rewarding bad behavior will only lead to more bad behavior. We learned this from the last mass amnesty program in 1986. Since the 1986 amnesty, America's illegal immigration problems have only gotten worse.