Napolitano: Legal status for illegals will help national security, labor unions
Posted on Saturday, November 14 @ 02:29:32 EST
Topic: Department of Homeland Security
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 U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Friday that providing some kind of legal citizenship pathway and status to illegal immigrants -- which critics say is amnesty -- is key to U.S. national security.
“We will never have fully effective law enforcement or national security as long as so many millions remain in the shadows,” Napolitano said in a speech Friday to the liberal advocacy group Center for American Progress.
Topics: Illegal Immigration, Napolitano, Obama Administration, amnesty, labor unions, immigration reform, American workers
November 13, 2009
Mike Sunnucks
Phoenix Business Journal
Napolitano said the Obama administration favors immigration reforms that include pathways for the 11 to 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. to gain legal status. That includes paying back taxes and fines for entering the U.S. illegally and learning English. Critics of such plans say that will amount to amnesty for those who illegally entered the country.
Napolitano — who served as Arizona governor — said legalizing illegal immigrants will help cut into human smuggling and trafficking rings, organized crime that centers around the U.S.-Mexico border and help her agency go after those syndicates and businesses that illegally hire undocumented immigrants.
Napolitano acknowledged that immigration reforms and some kind of amnesty or legal path would benefit labor unions (a major Democratic Party constituency).
“As labor leaders have made clear to me, immigration reform will be a boon to American workers. Think about it: unions will never achieve the best terms for workers when a large part of the work force is illegal and operates in a shadow economy. By contrast, the status quo not only hurts American workers, it also stifles potential opportunities to grow our economy,” she said in the CAP speech.
The former Arizona governor also defended Obama administration economic policies, saying the Democratic president has reversed the trends of negative economic growth and job losses. She credited the $787 billion federal stimulus plan for part of that.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported last Friday that October’s national jobless rate was 10.2 percent -- the highest rate since April 1983.
The rate was 9.8 percent in September, 7.6 percent in January when Obama took office and 4.7 percent in November 2007.
The end of 2007 has been pegged as the start of the recession.
The U.S. lost 190,000 jobs in October and has lost 4.1 million jobs since January, though the losses have eased somewhat since late 2008.
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