Obama’s Immigration Meeting: Amnesty is the Wrong Agenda

Jena McNeill / June 26, 2009

Yesterday, the Obama Administration held a closed-door immigration conference, bringing together key members of Congress. It has been reported that this meeting focused on finding a way to push for comprehensive immigration reform in Congress this year. During the 2008 Presidential elections, then-candidate Barack Obama made a promise to take up immigration reform within his first year in office. He reiterated this pledge when he spoke to the Hispanic Congressional Caucus shortly after he was elected.

But all too often, comprehensive immigration reform has been another name for amnesty. Amnesty is not the right approach and is not likely to pass muster with the American public–they recognize that giving amnesty to 11 million illegal immigrants is much too costly and would encourage more people to break the law. The country learned this lesson in 1986 when 2.7 million people were granted amnesty. The program was wrought with fraud and it did nothing to stem illegal immigration– instead, even more people attemped to enter the U.S. (more…)