By Felicia Persaud
News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Fri. Aug, 3, 2012: The Right is at its “Slam Obama, Blame The Immigrants” game again, this time claiming the Obama administration and its immigration agencies are partly responsible for the rape, robbery and murder of American citizens because they refuse to enforce the immigration laws.
In its soap opera of hate and lies and just three months away from the Presidential election, the right-wing controlled U.S. Judiciary Committee of the Congress has released a report that claims “thousands of illegal and criminal immigrants not detained or deported by federal authorities have gone on to commit more crimes, including murder, rape, kidnapping, and child molestation.”
The report says that of 46,000 “illegal immigrants” caught and released by the Department of Homeland Security, over 7,000 (or 16 percent) of them were re-arrested on criminal charges within three years. Their crimes ranged from 19 murders, three attempted murders and 142 sex crimes.
The move is undoubtedly political and simply an attempt to stir up anti-immigrant sentiments in the general voting base against the President. It’s the right’s silly answer to the home run Obama hit when he changed the policy on June 15th to allow undocumented young people, brought as children to the US by their parents, to temporarily work and stay legally in the U.S.
But they GOPers, in their zeal to hit back at Obama, have failed to realize that the voting landscape of America has changed for good and they need to secure a new set of non-White voters if they are to win. Yet, all they continue to do is alienate this base further with comments from the likes of Conservative Texas Congressman, Lamar Smith.
Smith, who heads up the Judiciary Committee, began his blog in the Hill newspaper on August 1st by stating: “President Obama’s reckless amnesty agenda has proved to be both dangerous and deadly for the American people.”
He added that “the Obama administration’s lax immigration policies have allowed potentially millions of illegal immigrants to avoid current immigration laws, even though they have been apprehended by law enforcement.”
And “the President’s lack of immigration enforcement puts us at risk and costs American lives. We elect leaders to protect us – not put us in danger.”
What Smith has not acknowledged is no administration, including the past Republican government of George W. Bush, has deported as many immigrants as the Obama administration has.
The traffic from illegal immigration crossings is at an all time low at the borders and there are more “illegal immigrants” in federal prisons now awaiting deportation than ever before.
More Americans are killing their fellow nationals in at much higher numbers than cited in this report. In just one incident recently, an American-born, Caucasian man, slaughtered a dozen people in a movie theater in Colorado in one evening!
Yet a lot is being made of 19 murders committed by just 16 percent of undocumented immigrants!
Immigrant voters must go out in large numbers on November 6th and vote while telling a friend and neighbor to do the same.
Let’s show the Republicans what they are missing and what real power is all about and that race baiting and immigrant scapegoating without real solutions will not be tolerated.
The writer is founder of NewsAmericasNow, CaribPR Wire and Hard Beat Communications.
