Obama's Immigration Speech: Stop Laughing, He's Serious

President Obama left no cliché unturned in his much-touted July 1 speech on immigration, and it's impossible to read the transcript without laughing. The southern border is too long to secure! We can't deport 11 million illegals!! We have too stepped up enforcement! Obama even finished—wait for it—with Emma Lazarus and the Statue of Liberty!!! (curiously singling out only the Jewish component of the 1880-1920 Great Wave of immigrants). NumbersUSA has an excellent dissection here.

But actually Obama's speech was no laughing manner. For example, it contained this telling line:

We should make it easier for the best and the brightest to come to start businesses and develop products and create jobs.

That means the Obama legislation, when it materializes, will include increases in legal immigration. He's going to go the full Bush, in other words—the Open Borders element in Bush's 2004 amnesty proposal that was so incredible that Republican voters literally didn't believe he had proposed it.

Obama also claimed that "laws like Arizona's put huge pressures on local law enforcement to enforce rules that ultimately are unenforceable". (My emphasis). Since SB1070 only empowers Arizona to enforce already existing federal law, this can only mean that Obama thinks federal law is unenforceable.

This seems to me to cast doubt upon the sincerity with which he took the oath of office, and to raise the specter (as it did in the case of George W. Bush) of ultimate impeachment.

Many commentators appear puzzled that Obama would make this speech now, right on the eve of depressing unemployment numbers (see Ed Rubenstein's analysis here). A few think he's just angling for an incremental victory, such as the DREAM Act; others, such as the appalling Karl Rove, fresh from his triumphant destruction of the Reagan coalition, think that Obama is "not serious", just pandering to Hispanics. (Rove used the forum given to him by the Bill O'Reilly show to pitch an agricultural worker amnesty, so you know where the GOP Establishment, and its donors, are going).

All of which makes me increasingly uneasy. Didn't these same commentators tell us Obamacare was dead? I increasingly think that, in Obama's peculiar world, what he is doing makes sense and that he does intend to push amnesty through, probably by some sort of parliamentary coup.

Two coup possibilities currently rumored in Washington:

(1) Executive Branch parole;

(2) attaching amnesty to the budget reconciliation bill during the lame duck session, when Republicans could tell their betrayed constituents that voting against it would also cut off financial support for American troops in the field.

Obama's peculiar isolation was recently noted by Michael Oren, Israel's ambassador to the U.S.:

"Oren reportedly told the diplomats that he has good access to the administration, but that 'Obama has very tight control over his immediate environment, and it is hard to influence him.'

"'This is a one-man show,' Oren reportedly said.

Oren denies describing bleak U.S.-Israel relations, JTA, June 28 2010

Obama's "one-man show" tendency exacerbates the problem that his Administration actually has very shallow roots in the historic American nation, as I discussed for example here. It's entirely possible that, surrounded by minorities and leftists, he genuinely believes that amnesty will win by enthusing his base. His problem is that the minority-leftist base is just not big enough. (In fairness, many Republicans don't realize this either, but hey, they are the "stupid party", after all.)

At least, Obama's leftist-minority base is not big enough just yet. But continued immigration, and amnesty for all those "undocumented Democrats", is the single best chance to expand the base. (Via Jerry Woodruff at Middle American News, I learn that there's an academic term for this process—"The Curley Effect", named for Boston Mayor James M. Curley, who systematically drove his Protestant opponents out of the city. See Glaeser, Edward L. and Andrei Shleifer. The Curley Effect: The Economics Of Shaping The Electorate, Journal of Law, Economics and Organization, 2005, v21(1,Apr), 1-19.

Alarmingly for the Democrats, there are actually signs that American in general and Republicans in general are waking up—one example being Rand Paul.

Even more alarmingly for the Democrats, there are also signs that enforcement is popular and will work. Look at this recent story, picked at random:

"COLUMBUS, Ohio – A new poll of voters shows support for an Arizona-style immigration crackdown in Ohio.

"In the survey released Tuesday by Quinnipiac University, 48 percent of Ohio voters say they approve of Arizona's tough new immigration law. It requires police to question a person's immigration status if there's reason to suspect the person is in the country illegally.

"Twenty-eight percent say they disapprove….

"'Some of them are going back to other states. Some of them are going back to Mexico,' said Alex Flores who runs La Voz Hispana, an Hispanic newspaper based on the west side of Columbus.

"He says the Mexican population in Central Ohio is already shrinking.

"He claims there are approximately 80,000 Hispanics living in Central Ohio but it's down about 20 percent from a year ago.

"'The lack of jobs would be the No. 1 reason. The fact that the state of Ohio is not renewing their license plates for their cars that would be the second main reason.'

"Ohio is requiring drivers to prove residency in order to renew a license plate.

"He also says such legislation in Ohio would make it shrink more..."[Poll Shows Support For Arizona-Type Immigration Law, by Mike Bowerstock, NBC4, Columbus, Ohio, June 29, 2010]

This explains the elite hysteria against Arizona—SB1070 simply cannot be allowed to succeed. America's post-1965 immigration disaster must be locked in.

All this and Obama's narcissistic expectations syndrome too. He's always gotten everything he wanted on an Affirmative Action platter. Why not Obamesty?

I think he'll go for it.

Fasten your seat belts!

Peter Brimelow (email him) is editor of VDARE.COM and author of the much-denounced Alien Nation: Common Sense About America's Immigration Disaster, (Random House - 1995) and The Worm in the Apple (HarperCollins - 2003)