Obama did say he was going to “Fundamentally transform America…”
According to Debbie Wasserman Shultz (D-lusional) – Obama “has the most border patrols and border security deployed at the border of any previous president.” Reality begs to differ. The latest report from Pew states that the amount of illegal immigrants currently in the country outnumber unemployed Americans.
The Pew Research Center’s latest estimate of the number of illegal aliens residing in the United States—11.7 million as of March 2012–was less than the approximately 12.5 million people whom the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated were unemployed in the United States in the average month of 2012.
However, it exceeds the approximately 11.46 million people whom BLS says were unemployed in the average month of 2013.
Pew released its latest report on the “unauthorized immigrant” population on Sept. 23, 2013. Headlined “Population Decline of Unauthorized Immigrants Stalls, May Have Reversed,” it estimated that the illegal alien population in the United States in March 2012 was 11.7 million.
“The number of unauthorized immigrants living in the U.S. climbed steadily from 1990 to 2007, when it peaked at 12.2 million people,” said the Pew report. “The trend of annual increases averaging more than 500,000 per year then changed abruptly as the number of unauthorized immigrants living in the U.S. fell in 2008 and 2009, reversing a pattern of gains that had prevailed for decades.”
“In 2012, the population of 11.7 million unauthorized immigrants was half a million people smaller than it had been in 2007, when the Great Recession began,” said Pew, noting that the “recession officially ended in June 2009.”
“Although it appears that the unauthorized immigrant total has begun to grow again, the data are insufficient to say so definitively,” said Pew. “The difference in the size of the unauthorized population from 2010 (11.4 million) to 2012 (11.7 million), or from 2011 (11.5 million) to 2012 is not statistically significant.”
The Department of Homeland Security’s latest estimate of the illegal alien population in the United States, published in March 2012, also estimated there were 11.5 million unauthorized immigrants in the United States as of 2011. Unlike Pew, DHS has not yet published an estimate for 2012.
If Pew’s estimate that there were 11.7 million illegal aliens in the United States as of March 2012 is accurate–and if that population has not begun to decline again as Pew estimated it did during 2007-2009 recession—then there would have been more illegal aliens in the United States in 2013 than people who were unemployed.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 11,460,000 Americans unemployed on average in 2013, down from 12,506,000 in 2012. A person is considered to be “unemployed” by BLS if they are in the civilian noninstitutional population (n.b. they are at least 16 years old and not on active duty in the military or in an institution such as a prison, nursing home, or mental hospital) and do not have a job but have actively sought one in the last four weeks.
People in the civilian noninstitutional population who are not employed and have not actively sought a job in the last four weeks are considered by BLS to be “not in the labor force.” In 2013, according to BLS, there was a record-high average of 90,290,000 people not in the labor force in the United States. That was up from 88,310,000 in 2012.
This statistic shouldn’t surprise anyone, especially considering the fact that DHS admitted to inflating the numbers of illegal immigrants they claim to deport by including those caught at the border before they enter the country.
Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson acknowledged Tuesday that his department’s deportation numbers are now mostly made up of illegal immigrants caught at the border, not just those from the interior, which means they can’t be compared one-to-one with deportations under President Bush or other prior administrations.
The administration has argued it is tougher on illegal immigration than previous presidents, and immigrant-rights groups have excoriated President Obama, calling him the “deporter-in-chief” for having kicked out nearly 2 million immigrants during his five-year tenure.
But Republican critics have argued those deportation numbers are artificially inflated because more than half of those being deported were new arrivals, caught at the border by the U.S. Border Patrol. Previous administrations primarily counted only those caught in the interior of the U.S. by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“Under the Obama administration, more than half of those removals that were attributed to ICE are actually a result of Border Patrol arrests that wouldn’t have been counted in prior administrations,” said Rep. John Culberson, Texas Republican.
“Correct,” Mr. Johnson confirmed.
That would mean that in a one-to-one comparison with the final years of the Bush administration, deportations of those same people under Mr. Obama had actually fallen, according to immigration analysts who have studied the data.
In 2013, ICE was responsible for about 133,000 of the 368,000 immigrants removed. The Washington Times calculated that meant a less than 1 percent risk of an illegal immigrant living in the interior of the U.S. being deported.
And now, after the late night announcement that Obama has ordered a review of deportation practices, (he’d like them handled “more humanely,” as though we hog tie them at the border and toss them over a fence) I see the number of illegal immigrants in the country growing exponentially.
Seeking to pacify frustrated immigration advocates, President Barack Obama is directing the government to find more humane ways to handle deportation for immigrants in the U.S. illegally, the White House said Thursday.
With prospects for an immigration overhaul in Congress appearing ever dimmer, immigration advocates have been ramping up pressure on Obama to halt all deportations — a step Obama has insisted he can’t take by himself. By announcing he’s open to changing how the U.S. enforces its current laws, Obama is signaling he may be growing more inclined to test the limits of his authority in the face of congressional inaction.
Obama’s announcement came Thursday in a meeting with Latino lawmakers who are seeking ways to resuscitate an immigration overhaul despite resistance from Republicans and election-year politics that have confounded their efforts. The White House said Obama told the lawmakers — all Democrats — that he’s deeply concerned about the pain that families suffer when they are separated due to a broken immigration system.
“He told the members that he has asked Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson to do an inventory of the Department’s current practices to see how it can conduct enforcement more humanely within the confines of the law,” the White House said in a statement.
Couple all of this with the fact that Obama has reduced fines for companies hiring illegal immigrants by 40%, (Yep, you read that correctly, 40%) Obama is creating a War On The Middle Class by encouraging employers to hire people who enter the country illegally over legal citizens looking for employment. So much for the “rule of law” being one of the touchstones of his presidency.