Obama Claims Opposition To Mass Illegal Immigration is Racist

Former president Barack Obama – the man who took a wrecking ball to America’s immigration enforcement system during his time in office – is at it again. During a Latino business conference in San Diego, Mr. Obama claimed that opposition to mass, unchecked migration and amnesty is rooted in supposed racism. Sadly, this has been an uninterrupted drumbeat from the pro-mass-immigration crowd for many years now. The purveyors of this line of attack – including Mr. Obama – are not only distracting from the actual facts but are also attempting to shut down an honest debate while simultaneously dividing Americans based on ethnicity and ancestry. In other words, they are doing exactly what they accuse those they are attacking of doing.

During the annual L’Attitude conference the former president claimed that “[r]ight now, the biggest fuel behind the Republican agenda is related to immigration and the fear that somehow America’s character is going to be changed if, people of darker shades, there are too many of them here.”

Regarding amnesty, Obama stated that “[u]nless we’re able to return to a more inclusive vision inside the Republican Party, it’s going to be hard to get a bill done.” What Obama terms a “more inclusive vision” resulted in the disastrous amnesty of 1986, after which the number of illegal aliens present in the U.S. grew from 3 million post-amnesty to approximately 15.5 million as of the end of 2021 – more than a fivefold increase. Could it be that many Americans have simply learned from history rather than rejecting “inclusivity”?

But, getting back to Mr. Obama’s main accusation, is opposition to illegal immigration really driven primarily by racism? The pro-mass-migration crowd’s go-to assertion is rooted in the fact that the vast majority of illegal aliens are from Latin America, Asia, or Africa and could therefore be considered people of color. Thus, according to Mr. Obama and other mass immigration apologists, racism can be the only possible reason anyone would oppose illegal immigration. In fact, here are only a few valid, completely non-ethnicity-related reasons to be deeply concerned about the Biden Border Crisis:

• More illegal immigration all too often means more crime. Ruthless and brutal drug cartels, human traffickers, gang members, and other criminals exploit porous borders to enter our nation and wreak havoc. According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the number of illegal aliens with criminal histories apprehended by the Border Patrol increased by almost 350 percent between Fiscal Years 2020 and 2022. Additionally, research by FAIR found that illegal aliens are much more likely to become incarcerated for non-immigration-related crimes than lawful migrants or citizens – of any race or origin.

• The Southwest border serves as a conduit for the smuggling of practically all of the deadly drug Fentanyl (e.g., 96 percent in August). As seizures spike, so do Fentanyl overdose deaths, making this synthetic opioid – supplied to the Mexican drug cartels by China – the leading cause of death among young Americans.

• The long and perilous journey frequently exposes the attempted illegal border crossers to dangers. Significant numbers of women and girls are raped, and unauthorized alien deaths are at an all-time high at the southern border itself.

• Although illegal immigration amounts to a cheap labor subsidy for certain employers, the American taxpayer – particularly hard hit by the current levels of inflation – is bearing an increasing net fiscal burden associated with illegal immigration, which reached $143.1 billion in 2021.

• As the number of non-English-speaking students grows due to spiking illegal immigration, so does the impact on public schools. Educating Limited English Proficient (LEP) children of illegal aliens cost the taxpayers $55 billion annually, which is 70 percent of the total $78 billion yearly cost of LEP education (data as of 2020).

Not surprisingly, the border crisis has been one of the major reasons why Hispanics in traditionally Democratic southern Texas have been gravitating towards the GOP, and even Democratic Latino political leaders in the Texas border zone have openly criticized Biden’s illegal immigration crisis. Ignoring all of the above is the hallmark of either a disingenuous identity-politics demagogue or a completely out-of-touch elitist. Or perhaps it’s both. Either way, Mr. Obama should at least ask himself why the uber-wealthy, ostensibly “pro-immigrant” Massachusetts island of Martha’s Vineyard – where the Obamas own a $12 million, almost 7,000 square foot waterfront mansion – had a mere 50 illegal aliens sent there by Florida quickly deported from the island.