Doris Meissner, former head of Bill Clinton’s immigration agency writes in today’s Washington Post about a study issued by the Migration Policy Institute, that she co-authored. Her argument is that virtually all that can be done in terms of immigration enforcement is being done already so the time has come “…to better align immigration policy with the nation’s economic and labor market requirements and with future growth and well-being.” By that she means adopt a new amnesty for illegal aliens and increase legal immigration and temporary workers that are sought by businesses.
But, citing aggregate numbers of dollars spent since 1986 is misleading. Increases in expenditures are in part due to different timeframes and in part due to different budgetary categories, and relate in part to changes in the threat of international terrorism and in part to the costs of processing surging numbers of international visitors, foreign students and temporary workers as well as processing the increased numbers of criminal aliens being deported.
This argument is a flimflam designed to distract from the fact that the Obama administration has systematically been discarding any semblance of immigration enforcement in the interior of the country against the millions of illegal aliens who have taken U.S. jobs. The border is not secure because illegal aliens are still attracted by the ability to find better paying jobs than in their homeland, and the workplace is not secure against the continued flow of illegal aliens undercutting wages for American workers.