Another broken deal: Will Obama sabotage immigration reform too?
Obama would create a freeway to citizenship from day one. That’s a poison pill for Republicans. Scrapping the guest worker program would also alienate Republicans, the business community, and those conservatives who regard it correctly as an alternative to illegal border-crossing.
Obama didn’t talk about guest workers in his speech. But Richard Trumka, the head of the AFL-CIO, was sitting in front of him in Las Vegas when he spoke. Organized labor has long opposed the program and was instrumental in killing it in the 1960s.
The president’s motives are suspicious. In 2007, he backed a bipartisan bill, while voting for amendments certain to scare off Republicans. One was to kill the guest worker provision after five years. It passed by one vote. It wasn’t the only reason the bill ultimately died, but it was a factor.
Now Obama is demanding immigration reform be speeded up or he’ll unleash his own proposal. Coming from a president who promised to tackle immigration in his first year, then waited until after his reelection, this requires political moxie. He has plenty of that. Being accused of hypocrisy won’t faze him either.
Blowback
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If he can gain political advantage, sure, why not. He doesn’t care about the policy. It’s all about consolidating power and ending the inconvenient features of our system – then real policy can be made.
forest on February 2, 2013 at 4:26 PM
North Mexico embraces Single Payer – coming soon.
OldEnglish on February 2, 2013 at 4:29 PM
He will do whatever it takes to keep the issue alive and inflame it. He wants the issue, not the solution.
petefrt on February 2, 2013 at 4:37 PM
Barack Obama is an incompetent narcissist amateur who doesn’t care about America and spends most of his time vacationing and playing golf. Rubio and Boehner can pretend to be outsmarted by the SCOAMF all they want, but I believe that as much as I believe Obama shoots skeet. Occam’s razor suggests that the Republicans in Congress are hiding behind Obozo because they prefer to pass liberal policy.
sauldalinsky on February 2, 2013 at 4:42 PM
He wants a marxist country and will do WHATEVER it takes to fulfill that goal.
Up to and including killing you.
davidk on February 2, 2013 at 4:45 PM
Opposing a guest worker program is just stupid.
If given the choice between citizenship and a guest worker visa that allowed them to travel freely between Mexico, et al, and the US, how many illegals would prefer the latter? My guess is most.
Illegals are looking for work, they aren’t huddled masses yearning to be free. The reason they stay here is because after having risked so much to sneak in, they dare not leave.
The only reason the Left is opposed to a guest worker program is because they prefer citizen voters to non-citizen workers. And the unions only see illegals as potential new members.
The Left never does anything to benefit America. They only act in their political interests. I hate them all.
Charlemagne on February 2, 2013 at 4:45 PM
This. It’s all about the votes and creating a permanent dependency underclass.
petefrt on February 2, 2013 at 4:52 PM
The next time you hear someone talking about gridlock, remind them that destruction of the GOP, not resolution of the issue, is Obama’s real goal. Living as he does in the media’s cone of loving silence, he thinks he can acheve that destruction. This ensures that he will always try to force the GOP to give more than it possibly.
For Obama it is a win-win… either he wins everything he wants and more, or there is a stalemate for which the media will obliginly blame the GOP. The media’s willing enablement of Obama’s bad faith bargaining is the source of the gridlock we have.
drunyan8315 on February 2, 2013 at 5:14 PM
If bho does NOT get his way on illegal aliens, he will just do his eo to see to it it gets done! How many times has bho done this and againt our constitution?
We will have millions sucking off our country, sending billions to their families in another country and probably not paying a penny in taxes? Cash is the way those who hire the illegal aliens do things it seems? And to boot, those will not/do not want to be American’s, honor our flag, or learn English. What’s not to like about these? The bottom line from bho/team, suck off our nation, get votes and totally crater our nation? True or not?
L
letget on February 2, 2013 at 6:20 PM
Obama is more likely to sabotage it than Graham, McCain or that caveman Boehner.
Wigglesworth on February 2, 2013 at 7:26 PM
I think the obama doesn’t necessarily want an Amnesty bill. I think he just wants chaos- people fighting in the streets. Whether he can get that by passing Amnesty or demagoguing the GOP on it is all the same to him. It’s the Republicans who really, really want Amnesty.
At this point, I’m not sure if I could say whether it’s this White House and the Democrat party, or the GOP who is the greater danger to the nation.
They should all of them be slung up by their ankles and beaten with sticks till the treason bleeds out of them.
sartana on February 2, 2013 at 8:16 PM