I hope none of my readers has the misfortune to ever be trapped in a sinking rowboat with President Obama, because the first thing he will do is throw the bailing bucket overboard.
This is an administration that has a problem with priorities.
In Obama’s "Fear Factor" run-up to Friday’s start of the sequester, one of the threats made to American taxpayers was 3,500 Border Patrol agents will be laid off. Then we learned this week that hundreds of illegal aliens already being held in detention facilities were released in an effort to “save money.”
This is exactly the wrong thing to do if Obama is serious about passing an immigration "reform" bill this year.
Before the majority of Americans will support any changes in immigration policy, they must first be assured the border will be secured, so the nation will not be facing a repeat of the problem a few years down the line.
Threatening Border Patrol layoffs and releasing illegal aliens that have already been arrested only serves to undermine any credibility the administration has on the border security issue.
Of course Sec. of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano denies knowing anything about “underlings” deciding to release illegals this week, but admitting you are asleep at the switch on a decision this unpopular is hardly reassuring to the American public.
Even before this latest catch-and-release debacle, the Obama administration’s approach to an immigration bill this year had a serious flaw. According to ABC News, the administration has absolutely no provision for increased border security in its proposal.
The administration approach is basically amnesty and adios to enforcement. That, coupled with this week’s release of arrestees, tells me that Obama is simply not serious about solving the immigration problem until after the 2014 elections.
Instead he wants to use a bill he knows won’t pass — mostly due to his failures — as an issue with which to attack Republican candidates during the off-year election. Typically, the party in the White House suffers major losses in second-term elections. Republicans lost control of the Senate in the midterm elections during my father’s second term and Obama certainly does not want to suffer a repeat.
So his goal is minimize Democrat loses in the House and Senate by outraging Hispanic voters. His strategy is essentially betraying his base in an effort to manipulate them to the polls.
This is remarkably cynical even for the Obama administration.
As I outlined
here, true immigration reform will entail passing legislation here in the United States, while at the same time publicly challenging Mexico’s new president to end corruption at home and free his economy from the grip of socialism.
But that would deprive Obama of an issue. And the chance of him putting the public before politics is nonexistent.