IBD ^ | 04/27/2012
President Obama's Huey Long-style government spending has showered benefits on illegals. That's ironic, because for the first time since the 1930s they would now rather live in Mexico. Maybe jobs matter after all.
At a Hispanic Community Action Summit led by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa this month, 39 federal officials from agencies ranging from ICE to the EPA courted hundreds of Hispanic activists with one message: Claim your government benefits.
They offered up goodies from food aid to educational benefits to help in fighting deportation.
The outreach, said a conference organizer, was based on a "community organizing" approach of asking Latinos what they wanted and giving it to them.
Well, according to a new study by Pew Hispanic Center, plenty just want jobs, not handouts. Mexican illegal immigrants — about 70% of the 10 million-plus illegals in the U.S. — are leaving America in droves.
For the first time since the Great Depression, more are going back to Mexico than are coming here. Pew estimates that 1.4 million Mexicans came to America in the five years ended in 2010, while the same number and their U.S.-born children returned home.
At about the same time, Obama has showered so much federal largess on the Hispanic community to shore up support for the Latino vote.
In addition to benefits regardless of immigration status, he's offered de facto amnesty by cutting down on deportations, saying U.S. policy will be to prioritize those who have committed crimes. By manipulating statistics to include voluntary deportations, he's managed to make it appear that deportations are up to 400,000.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.investors.com ...
