Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has declared that the southern border is sufficiently secured and that it's time for Congress to start working on "comprehensive immigration reform." Of course, "comprehensive immigration reform" is code for mass amnesty and massive increases in foreign workers. I guess the administration hasn't really grasped that 10 percent unemployment might not be the greatest time to try to convince the American people that illegitimate employers really need to import more cheap foreign workers.
The irony comes from the Obama administration's systematic dismantling of immigration enforcement. After it lost the 2007 amnesty fight, the Bush administration began in earnest to step up enforcement on the border, in the interior, at worksites, and in cooperation with state and local police. Since arriving in Washington, the Obama team has steadily weakened enforcement. Obama has launched an intimidation and delegitimization campaign against popular Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, fettered the 287(g) program, stood down on worksite enforcement arrests, fought efforts to continue building the border fence, and begun implementing anti-enforcement demands of ethnic special interests. The new regime is even practically reverting to "catch and release."
After rapid moves that have politically activated many Americans, particularly programs of profligate spending in the hundreds of billions and trillions and other incomprehensible denominations, and government power grabs in ways unprecedented in America, the Obama team has overdrawn its political capital. Witness the slowing pace of the president's top legislative priority, health reform. This goal is taking a lot longer to accomplish than the Democratic Congress or the White House had bargained for. The opposition has steadily mounted. And peripheral issues, including illegal immigration and abortion, have contributed to health care's slowing pace.
Given that immigration has played as contentious a role in the health reform debate as it has, it's hard to imagine how pushing amnesty and more guestworkers -- that is, an open-borders agenda -- is expected to be achievable for this administration. Obama's vast overspending of taxpayers' money in bailouts, ineffective and wasteful "stimulus," government takeovers of Wall Street firms, banks, and the domestic auto industry, a failing push for an energy tax scheme, plus heath care may well mean the administration's political capital is in the red ink zone near the $1.4 trillion annual budget deficit this administration has perpetrated.
Besides, the American public hasn't forgotten about the immigration issue. It remains a highly controversial issue with elites on one side pushing amnesty and normal Americans on the other standing athwart "flyover country" yelling "stop." And the public isn't stupid. Napolitano, Obama, and other elites will prove just how out of touch they are if they follow through with a fresh amnesty push.