Obama Admits His Deportation Numbers Are “Deceptive”
09/30/2011
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Some truth slipped out the other day when the President held a Q&A session in the White House for Hispanic journalists.

Obama used that chat session to admit that his administration’s supposedly high numbers of deportations are “deceptive” because the stats count the quickie voluntary repatriations that occur every day on the border. These are the guys who keep trying until they make it past the Border Patrol and into the interior to steal US jobs.

At a time when jobs are among the top issues for American citizens, Obama doesn’t think job theft by illegal aliens is a problem and he even encourages it to inspire his illegal alien base.

Remarks by the President in an “Open for Questions” Roundtable, September 28, 2011

[. . .]
MR. LERNER: Just to follow up, Mr. President, you just mentioned enforcement of immigration laws in the subject of deportations, and you said that many of those — or it’s aimed at criminals. But until now, and until recently, it hadn’t been just criminals, or a majority of criminals, those that have been deported. And also, you have been deporting much more immigrants than the previous administration did in eight years. So laws didn’t change; enforcement was done even then. Why that emphasis on deportation during your administration?

THE PRESIDENT: Actually, what happened, if you look at the statistics, two things happened: Number one is, is that there was a much greater emphasis on criminals rather than non-criminals. And there’s been a huge shift in terms of enforcement, and that began as soon as I came into office. That change has taken place.

Secondly, the statistics are actually a little deceptive because what we’ve been doing is with the stronger border enforcement we’ve been apprehending folks at the borders and sending them back. That is counted as a deportation, even though they may have only been held for a day or 48 hours, sent back — that’s counted as a deportation. So we’ve been much more effective on the borders. But we have not been more aggressive when it comes to dealing, for example, with DREAM Act kids. That’s just not the case. 

So what we’ve tried to do is within the constraints of the laws on the books, we’ve tried to be as fair, humane, just as we can, recognizing, though, that the laws themselves need to be changed. And I’ve been unwavering in my support of changing the laws so that we’re strong on border security, we’re going after companies that are taking advantage of undocumented workers — paying them sub-minimum wages and not respecting workplace safety laws — but also saying that we’ve got to have a pathway to citizenship and for legal status for those who are already here and have put roots down here and are part of the fabric of our community, because we actually believe that they can contribute to our economy in an effective way.

The other thing that we want to emphasize is, for those who have an ambition to start a business, entrepreneurs, young people who have gotten college degrees or advanced degrees — for us to train them here in the United States and then send them back to start businesses elsewhere makes absolutely no sense. The history of many of our biggest businesses is they were started by immigrants who came here seeking opportunity. And we want to make sure that, both in terms of people who are here doing jobs that other folks may not want to do, but also people who have extraordinary training and can create jobs for all Americans, that we are giving both of those folks opportunities.

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