Federal Immigration Raids Growing Under Obama

In a very detailed analysis, David Bacon points out that the Barack Obama administration has upped the ante of enforcement against immigrant workers in ways that are either comparable, or worse, than the George W. Bush administration. Which is to say, even though Obama likes to talk tough about fair immigration reform, when it comes down to it he’s just like the Republicans.

Here’s an excerpt:

“President Obama condemned Arizona’s law that tries to make being undocumented a state crime, saying it would ‘undermine basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans.’  But then he called for legislation with guest worker programs and increased enforcement…Ironically, the Bush administration proposed a regulation that would have required employers to fire any worker who provided an employer with a Social Security number that did not match the SSA database.  That regulation was then stopped in court by unions, the ACLU, and the National Immigration Law Center.  The new administration, however, is implementing what amounts to the same requirement, with the same consequence of thousands of fired workers.”

It looks like we’ll all have to wait a while for comprehensive immigration reform, but in the meantime it looks like Obama and the rest of the Democrats will be pandering to the far right in order to continue to appear “tough on crime.”