“The number of immigrants added to the labor force every year is of a magnitude not seen in this country for over a century,” one American president wrote back in 2006 – and it wasn’t Donald Trump.
The excerpt is from Obama’s 2006 memoir “The Audacity of Hope,” and the full quote has gone viral after commentator Candace Owens posted it to her twitter. The rest of the quote is as follows:
Re: Illegal Immigrants
“…this huge influx of mostly low-skill workers provides some benefits to the economy as a whole —it also threatens to depress further the wages of blue-collar Americans & put strains on an already overburdened safety net.”-Barack Obama, Audacity of Hope
— Candace Owens (@RealCandaceO) August 27, 2018
It’s a striking reminder of just how off the rails the Democratic Party has gone on the issue of illegal immigration, as Obama’s comment quoted above is hardly the only time he’d spoken out against it.
On 15 December 2005, Barack Obama joined Republican Senator Mel Martinez of Florida at a press conference about immigration reform, during which Obama said that “We all agree on the need to better secure the border and to punish employers who choose to hire illegal immigrants. We are a generous and welcoming people, here in the United States, but those who enter the country illegally, and those who employ them, disrespect the rule of law and they are showing disregard for those who are following the law. We simply cannot allow people to pour into the United States, undetected, undocumented, unchecked and circumventing the line of people who are waiting patiently, diligently and lawfully to become immigrants in this country.”
And in 2009 as President, Obama spoke out against amnesty as a “free ride,” and demanding that any compromise to allow illegals to become citizens would require massive fines, a requirement that they speak English and a background check.
Others before the Trump era, including Chuck Schumer, Diane Feinstein, Hillary Clinton, and many others, spoke out against illegal immigration. It’s truly bizarre that illegal immigration is the issue they’ve chosen to oppose Donald Trump on most fervently, given that they know it was previously a bipartisan issue, but that could be because it’s the Party’s members that are changing ideologically.
The average Democrat has moved extremely far to the Left ideologically in recent years, and Democrat politicians could simply be adopting insane positions like support for illegal immigration to cater to that base. Luckily for the average Republican, such policies don’t poll well with Independents, which will put a significant drag on Democrats chances in winning elections come to the midterms.
