Because He's Not Done Yet With Health Care, Has Passed Budget-Busting Stimulus, & Still Has a Few Popularity Points Left, Obama Vows Comprehensive Immigration Reform…
President Barack Obama on Thursday assured immigration advocates frustrated by the wait for a promised overhaul of U.S. immigration laws that he remains committed to fixing a system he has said is broken.
What remains unclear is whether Congress will send him a bill this year. Obama also met separately later in the day with Sens. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who gave the president an outline of a bill they are drafting. Obama said afterward in a statement that he "looked forward to reviewing their promising framework."
One part of that "promising framework" is more tired than Charlie Rose's lower jaw muscles:
Another idea on the table is some type of high-tech Social Security card to keep illegal immigrants from getting jobs.
After meeting for more than an hour with Obama, immigration advocates told reporters they want Schumer and Graham to at least release their blueprint before a planned March 21 demonstration at the Capitol, with a bill introduced in the Senate soon after.The relatively short timetable for getting major legislation out of Congress in a midterm election year is one obstacle to getting a bill that combines tougher border enforcement with a pathway to legalization for the estimated 12 million people in the U.S. illegally.
That "high-tech Social Security card" will reportedly include biometric data and will be mandatory for all U.S. workers. In other words, a national I.D. card with the capability to track just about everybody and everything that's going on in the land of the free and the home of the brave. To read why the dream (or, more accurately, nightmare) of national I.D. cards won't work, check this out.
Sen. Graham appears to be dedicated to this exercise to doubtless protect the last fraying remnant of the massively protected South Carolina textile industry from modernity. Sen. Schumer? He doesn't need any reason to act foolishly.
Given the recession, the looming possibility of new taxes (for health care, cap and trade, to pay for the stimulus, you name it), massive new employer regulations (for all the same reasons), the downward trend in illegal immigration, this seems like the perfect time to inject even more uncertainty into the employment system. Thanks a lot, fellas.
Is this any way to run a country? Are there some promising idiot execs in the GM and Chrysler divisions of the U.S. government that we can swap into leadership roles in the D.C. office?
The Wall Street Journal's Jason Riley makes the case to Let Them In! below.
