Last night, Secretary Clinton not only made clear that she would not take action to restore our immigration system, but that she would go even further than the Obama Administration – promising to not deport any illegal aliens except violent criminals or people planning terrorist attacks. This would exclude aliens charged or convicted for drug trafficking, bank or credit card fraud, forgery, theft, driving under the influence, and countless other criminal offenses.
The logic underlying Secretary Clinton’s position is dumbfounding, and assumes that it is better to wait until after an American life is lost, or to wait until a bomb is ready to go off, to attempt to take any enforcement action against those who have violated our immigration laws.
And there is no daylight between her position and that of Senator Sanders. What’s more, their strident support for granting executive amnesty beyond that which even President Obama was willing to do will only further depress the wages and employment prospects of U.S. workers – the very workers who they claim to support. And the morale of federal law enforcement officers will be lowered even further.
The immigration platforms of both Democratic candidates for President of the United States are as dangerous to our communities as they are detrimental to the national interest. Over the last eight years, President Obama has decimated the enforcement of our immigration laws, granted executive amnesty, and distorted our lawful immigration channels to such a point that they bear little to no resemblance to the laws duly passed by Congress.
Recent hearings in the Senate have found that the Obama Administration is deporting the fewest number of criminal aliens from the interior of our country in years; that it has only deported 3 to 4 percent of the illegal alien juveniles who have crossed our southern border in the last two and a half years; and, that nearly half a million aliens overstayed their visas – and face virtually no chance of being deported – in the last fiscal year alone. Yet for Secretary Clinton and Senator Sanders, the Obama Administration’s near obliteration of our immigration system does not go far enough.
Thus, the policies of Secretary Clinton and Senator Sanders declare that all who succeed in entering the country illegally, and all who overstay their visas, will be permitted to remain in the United States for as long as they see fit.
For far too long, the American people have been crying out for a lawful system of immigration – one that serves their interests. One that puts as the highest priority their safety, their jobs, their wages, their schools, and their hospitals.
Unfortunately, the American people can only be assured of this: the immigration platforms of Secretary Clinton and Senator Sanders would ensure continued lawlessness, the further erosion of national sovereignty, the depression of wages, the diminution of job prospects, and a continued fundamental transformation of the United States of America.
U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) serves on four Senate committees: Armed Services, Budget, Environment and Public Works, and Judiciary, where he is Chairman of the Subcommittee on Immigration and The National Interest.
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