Obama Administration Prepares for Amnesty – on Taxpayers' Wallet

By James R. Edwards, Jr. on October 2, 2009

Though health "reform" and energy taxes are ahead of immigration on the legislative agenda, the Obama administration has begun greasing the bureaucracy's skids for when amnesty comes. For anyone who followed the bureaucratic screw-ups following the 1986 IRCA amnesty, this scheme looks strangely loophole-ridden -– like the rubber-stamping and massive fraud and abuse of 20-plus years ago. Rather than an honest effort to improve processing times, Homeland Security appears to have missed some details. For instance, if illegal aliens mail a form by snail-mail to a "lockbox," that could constitute their being "documented" and therefore deemed as being present in the United States "under color of law." That designation affords them extra due process privileges, regardless of subsequent facts being discovered that make them deportable.

There's also sleight of hand in the President's vigorous denial that illegal aliens won’t qualify for taxpayer-funded health care. He has said we need amnesty in order to give those currently illegally living here health care (above and beyond emergency care, which they receive today). Ignore the fact that many illegal aliens will already receive Medicaid, affordability subsidies, and access to the "exchange" and a "public option," because Congress is unlikely to require verification of eligibility. The outright addition of 10 million to 12 million low-income people to the health program being designed in Congress will add literally hundreds of billions of dollars of unfunded liability to taxpayers. How the costs presently going on Uncle Sam's credit card will be paid for is unclear. Congress and the Obama administration have already charged more than $1.6 trillion in national debt just this year. And the national debt total has reached an all-time record approaching $12 trillion.

It is fiscally (and morally) irresponsible to overextend the public treasury (and American taxpayers) in the breathtaking manner this Congress and administration are doing. Legalizing aliens adds significantly to that public cost burden.