More Misinformation from the Media:
The U.S. Supreme Court should uphold President Obama’s 2013 decision to delay deportations for millions of immigrants already living and contributing to American society. Then Congress needs to do its job. . . . Common sense reforms should include an avenue to citizenship for some of the estimated 11 million individuals who have resided in the U.S. for years. . . . Jorge Baron, executive director of the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, says. . . . These are people who are already contributing to our community. They just want to contribute fully. – How Immigration Reform Would Unlock Human Potential, Seattle Times Editorial Board, 5/3/16
Fact Check: If you care nothing about the U.S. Constitution and the freedoms it protects, then you might make an argument for endorsing President Obama’s edict to suspend immigration laws and grant legal status and work permits to millions of illegal aliens. But for what it’s worth, and indeed it’s a lot, the Constitution delegates the task of lawmaking to Congress, the elected representative body of the people. The president is supposed to enforce laws, not make them. If he does, he’s acting as a dictator, not a president. As for Congress “doing its job,” it already has by declining to pass legalization (amnesty) for illegal aliens.
The Times editors think that it’s “common sense” to allow illegal aliens to become citizens. Some argue that it is humanitarian to let them stay in this country. But what humanitarian principle requires that they should have citizenship as well? Citizenship is a privilege a foreigner should earn with good intentions and behavior. Consistently breaking our laws is a poor qualification for that privilege. To give citizenship to illegal aliens is to rewards their lawbreaking and debases the worth and value of our citizenship.
To say that illegal aliens contribute to our community suggests that they are doing what they do out of the purest concern for our country. In reality in most cases they do what they do for their own self-interest. On the other hand, we have loyal patriotic citizens who would like to contribute more to their communities, but they can’t thanks to the jobs illegal aliens take, the wages they suppress, and the public benefits—intended for citizens—that they take. Promotion of illegal aliens makes native-born and naturalized citizens second-class as citizens.