http://frontpagemag.com/2012/06/19/obama%e2%80%99s-quick-illegal-immigrant-fix-ignores-the-problem-of-assimilation/
America’s ward-heeler-in-chief just bought some votes with the policy equivalent of a keg of beer and a slab of bacon. Obama’s memorandum to Homeland Security head Napolitano to stop the deportation of illegal aliens brought here as children and granting them work permits bypassed Congress, that branch of government our quaint Constitution makes responsible for such policy. Obama said so himself last year when he reminded people that he couldn’t “change the law unilaterally” and “We have to pass bills through the legislature and then I can sign it.” But the need to stanch the bleeding from a week of economic bad news for his reelection campaign has given the president Constitutional amnesia. If Obama had been sincerely interested in crafting a legal, bipartisan, permanent solution to this problem, he could have negotiated with Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio, who has crafted a more sensible solution than last year’s Dream Act, and worked through Congress. But the need to throw some goodies to Latino voters in several swing states critical for his own reelection was more important than actually governing according to the Constitution.
Obama’s accompanying rationale for this decision, moreover, was full of unexamined assumptions and sentiments. “These are young people who study in our schools, they play in our neighborhoods, they’re friends with our kids, they pledge allegiance to our flag. They are Americans in their heart, in their minds, in every single way but one: on paper,” Obama said. They “face the threat of deportation to a country that [they] know nothing about, with a language that [they] may not even speak.” They “for all intents and purposes, are Americans. They’ve been raised as Americans, understand themselves to be part of this country.” All those statements are loaded with begged questions that point to the bigger problem we have with immigration both legal and illegal––the question of national identity and national loyalty.