Pres. Obama Pulls Rug Out From Under Ex-Convict Pleading for a Job

By Roy Beck

Today's news reports on Pres. Obama's visit to California include a touching interaction with an ex-convict who has lost his job. But his comments about making sure that illegal aliens keep THEIR jobs illustrates the common occurrence of really smart people at the top of our government who just don't get it. They don't understand that there are a limited number of U.S. jobs and that when you fill those jobs with foreign workers (including illegal ones) American workers lose out. Look at what happened . . .

This is from Scott Wilson's report on Mr. Obama's visit in southern California in the March 19 edition of the Washington Post:

In one exchange, a man who said he was a convicted felon, thanked Obama for listening to him, then told him he had recently been laid off from Toyota after 13 years on the job.

'What am I going to do?' he asked.

After a pause, Obama told him, 'You have made amends for your past mistakes, you are rehabilitated, and you have proven yourself in the job market. Based on what you are telling,' the President said, 'what you are facing has less to do with the fact that you are a felon, than that the job market is really tight right now.'

This is the point you want the President to say that he'll do everything he can to help people like the questioner to be able to find a job later this year.

But the very next paragraph in the Post said that Mr. Obama pledged the opposite:

Obama pledged to work for comprehensive immigration reform but said it 'would not be a free ride' for those here illegally. He said successful reform would entail better control of the border -- an issue he said he intends to work on with President Felipe Calderon of Mexico in a visit there next month -- and a process that would allow 'those who have been here for a long time to come out of the shadow' and become citizens.

Studies show that most ex-convicts who have been released from prison are less-educated, the very same characteristic shared by most illegal aliens. The estimated 7 million illegal aliens who are working are holding jobs that are best suited for the hundreds of thousands of Americans being released from prisons.

We went through this same intellectual disconnect with Pres. Bush. Remember his grandiose State of the Union address in which he announced a program to ensure that people being released from prisons would find jobs so they can turn their lives around?

The problem was that Mr. Bush insisted on importing around 140,000 foreign workers a month in addition to enticing other foreign workers to come here illegally to take the jobs that the ex-cons needed. Not surprisingly, Mr. Bush's program for ex-cons never really took hold.

Well, we have a new President with the same set of blinders. And we have a news media that don't notice the disconnect, either.

I don't see any evidence that anybody thought it was strange that Pres. Obama could show such concern and compassion for the recently unemployed ex-con and then say that he intends to keep as many jobs tied up with illegal foreign workers as possible.

And now this morning, Fox News is reporting from sources inside DHS that worksite raids have for all practical purposes been suspended.

Very strange. The raids have been opening up jobs for unemployed Americans, primarily those at the bottom of the economic ladder. A new report from the Center for Immigration Studies finds that every job opened by driving out an illegal alien was quickly filled by a legal worker and that wages went up for all workers at those worksites after the raids.

Why would Pres. Obama want to stop helping American workers like that?

The answer is that political pandering to the radical extreme of his ideological base blinds him to even considering that illegal immigration has anything to do with unemployed Americans.