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Immigration Chicanery

9/16/2014  - Townhall.com  Phyllis Schlafly

The strategists who base their political advice on public opinion polls have just had a surprise. A new poll reports that the American people are now more likely to trust Republicans to handle immigration and less likely to trust Democratic plans to offer illegals a path to citizenship (aka amnesty). Many people have believed this for some time. But it is now confirmed in a poll taken by the pro-amnesty Wall Street Journal, so it must be so.

The new survey is decisive; 35 percent say the Republican Party would do a better job on immigration while only 27 percent say the Democrats would. That's a dramatic reversal from the previous year.

The Wall Street Journal poll also revealed another change in public opinion that should get the attention of candidates. Support for the much-discussed "pathway to citizenship" has dropped significantly from 64 percent in April to 53 percent today.

Obama had promised to ease the entry of more illegals this summer, but he obviously has heard from Democrats running for office in November. The Central American kids who are crashing over our border have made it more difficult to pretend there is no problem.

Another pollster, the Polling Company Inc. reports that half of Americans age 65 and over support a zero immigration policy and that three-quarters of respondents believe "green cards" should be given to fewer than 100,000 immigrants per year. The Polling Company Inc. also reports that Independents (47 percent) are more likely than Republicans (40 percent) or Democrats (37 percent) to want zero new immigrants allowed into our country.

With colossal impertinence, the Mexican government attacked Texas Gov. Rick Perry for sending National Guard troops to guard our Southern border, saying that Mexico "deeply rejects and condemns the deployment." The Mexicans accused Perry of taking this action to advance his political ambitions.

Perry did order 1,000 guardsmen to the border in July in support roles to assist the Texas Department of Public Safety, which Perry believes was necessary to compensate for federal inaction. They are deployed in support roles such as observation and tracking of illegal activity.

The Mexico City annual conference of the Telmex Foundation, headed by Mexican billionaire (and New York Times investor) Carlos Slim, included speeches by Hillary Rodham Clinton and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Slim was perhaps repaying the honor of having received the 2012 Global Citizen Award from the Clinton Global Initiative.

In his so-called keynote speech on Sept. 5 to Slim's assembly of "global citizens," Zuckerberg took the opportunity to attack America's laws. He said, "We have a strange immigration policy for a nation of immigrants. And it's a policy unfit for today's world."

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was in Mexico City for a separate meeting on Sept. 4, but he found time to attack the United States for what he called its "foolish regulation" of energy, such as laws that help keep oil and gas prices low by limiting the export of those precious resources. He refused to answer reporters' questions about security along our border with Mexico, but issued this teaser: "I won't have anything to say on immigration unless, and until, I become a candidate for the president of the United States."

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, on a two-day "state visit" to California, speaking in Spanish to a joint session of the California state legislature on Aug. 26, praised legislators for allowing illegal immigrants to obtain driver's licenses and state-funded scholarships at public universities. He ignored American demonstrators demanding the release of Sgt. Andrew Tahmooressi, the U.S. Marine who has been wrongly held in a Mexican prison for over 5 months.

Obama was saying all summer that his plan was to bypass Congress and the Constitution and issue an "executive amnesty" for millions of illegal aliens. His amnesty plan has since changed to be issued only after the 2014 elections so as not to defeat Democrats up for election in November.

His planned amnesty will include work permits, photo ID's and Social Security numbers for millions of people who entered the U.S. illegally, overstayed their visas or defrauded U.S. immigration authorities.

As Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) said, "Never in recent memory has the divide between the everyday citizen and the political elite been as wide as it is now." He says the immigration debate comes down to several major questions:

Does our country have the right to decide who comes to live and work here? Do we have the right to demand that our representatives enforce our laws? Should American workers get priority for jobs?

If your answer is yes, it is essential to block Obama's planned executive amnesty and demand that Harry Reid call this up for a vote.

As Sessions said, "Let this sink in. The majority leader of the Senate is bragging that he knows the president will circumvent Congress to issue executive amnesty to millions.