Thread: Biden: Illegal immigrants are 'already Americans'

March 27, 2014, 03:30 pm
Mike Lillis
The Hill

The nearly 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States are already citizens, as far as Vice President Biden is concerned.

"You know, 11 million people live in the shadows. I believe they're already American citizens," Biden said Thursday at a Washington gathering of the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. "These people are just waiting, waiting for a chance to contribute fully. And by that standard, 11 million undocumented aliens are already Americans, in my view."

The sentiment might come as a surprise to liberal Democrats and immigrant rights advocates who have hammered the Obama administration's deportation policies as far too aggressive and damaging to families.

Critics have pushed the administration to expand its 19-month-old deferred action program, which allows illegal immigrants brought to the country as kids to remain and work, so that it includes a broader swath of the illegal immigrant population. President Obama has resisted that move thus far.

The deportation issue is a tough one for the president, who at once wants to appear strong on enforcement to counter GOP critics; scale back deportations to energize Hispanic voters who came out for him overwhelmingly in 2008 and 2012; and keep pressure on Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and GOP leaders to bring immigration reform legislation to the floor.

House Democrats on Wednesday unveiled a discharge petition designed to force a vote on a reform bill. They acknowledged the petition likely wouldn't attract the 218 signatures needed but said the point was increasing the pressure on the Republicans to act.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Thursday that she's ready to sacrifice certain provisions the Democrats want to see in an immigration bill, but vowed to oppose any legislation that explicitly blocks illegal immigrants from becoming U.S. citizens.

"I want this bill desperately. I'm willing to make almost every compromise possible, but we cannot compromise on a pathway to citizenship," she told the members of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. "It cannot have a provision that prevents it from happening."

Biden said passage of comprehensive immigration reform legislation would be a boon to the economy, an argument the administration has made repeatedly.

"If we want a game changer, the single most important thing we can do for our economy and for America's future is pass immigration reform now," Biden said. "I've heard for too damn long how this was going to bankrupt us, and Social Security was going to take a nose-dive, and so on. … Well guess what? It's a game changer financially for the country."

Biden rattled off a list of figures from the Congressional Budget Office about the estimated effects of comprehensive immigration reform on the nation's economy, including predictions it would extend the solvency of Social Security.

"So much for the horror stories," Biden said.

Biden also decried a system where immigrant students receive advanced degrees and then have to leave the country before they can use them.

"We should be stapling a green card to each one of those degrees as they walk across the stage," he said.

"Let this go," Biden said, addressing Boehner. "Let people vote."

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefi...eady-americans

Biden Misquotes Teddy Roosevelt in Support of Illegal Alien Amnesty

March 28, 2014
by Daniel Greenfield


Good old Joe tried to make the “American” argument for why legalizing illegal aliens is the right thing to do.

“Eleven million people living in the shadows I believed are already American citizens,” Biden said. “These people are just waiting, waiting for a chance to be able to contribute fully, and by that standard, 11 million undocumented aliens are already Americans in my view.”

Biden referenced former President Theodore Roosevelt’s 1894 speech titled “True Americanism.”
“Teddy Roosevelt said it better. He said, Americanism is not a question of birthplace or creed or a line of descent. It’s a question of principles, idealism and character,” Biden said.

Liberals like the “True Americanism” speech for obvious reasons, since Roosevelt denounces what he considers phony patriotism and defends the adoption of all sorts of reforms, but they quote it rather selectively.

The next sentence after the one quoted by Biden undermines his whole argument.

“Americanism is a question of spirit, conviction, and purpose, not of creed or birthplace. The politician who bids for the Irish or German vote, or the Irishman or German who votes as an Irishman or German, is despicable, for all citizens of this commonwealth should vote solely as Americans.”

If they did that, Biden would never have become a V.P.

In the same speech, Roosevelt also states, “The patriotism of the village or the belfry is bad, but the lack of all patriotism is even worse.”

“The man who becomes Europeanized, who loses his power of doing good work on this side of the water, and who loses his love for his native land, is not a traitor; but he is a silly and undesirable citizen. He is as emphatically a noxious element in our body politic as is the man who comes here from abroad and remains a foreigner.”

That last part is particularly problematic considering that few of those being legalized actually want to be Americans in that sense of the word.

“Even if the weaklings who seek to be other than Americans were right in deeming other nations to be better than their own, the fact yet remains that to be a first-class American is fifty-fold better than to be a second-class imitation of a Frenchman or Englishman…”

“We welcome the German or the Irishman who becomes an American. We have no use for the German or Irishman who remains such. We do not wish German-Americans and Irish-Americans who figure as such in our social and political life; we want only Americans, and, provided they are such, we do not care whether they are of native or of Irish or of German ancestry. We have no room in any healthy American community for a German-American vote or an Irish-American vote, and it is contemptible demagogy to put planks into any party platform with the purpose of catching such a vote…”

“But where immigrants, or the sons of immigrants, do not heartily and in good faith throw in their lot with us, but cling to the speech, the customs, the ways of life, and the habits of thought of the Old World which they have left, they thereby harm both themselves and us.”

Even Joe Biden at this point ought to understand what TR’s feelings would have been about illegal alien amnesty.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgr...alien-amnesty/

Originally Posted by Jean

March 27, 2014, 03:30 pm
Mike Lillis
The Hill

The nearly 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States are already citizens, as far as Vice President Biden is concerned.

"You know, 11 million people live in the shadows. I believe they're already American citizens," Biden said Thursday at a Washington gathering of the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. "These people are just waiting, waiting for a chance to contribute fully. And by that standard, 11 million undocumented aliens are already Americans, in my view."

The sentiment might come as a surprise to liberal Democrats and immigrant rights advocates who have hammered the Obama administration's deportation policies as far too aggressive and damaging to families.

Critics have pushed the administration to expand its 19-month-old deferred action program, which allows illegal immigrants brought to the country as kids to remain and work, so that it includes a broader swath of the illegal immigrant population. President Obama has resisted that move thus far.

The deportation issue is a tough one for the president, who at once wants to appear strong on enforcement to counter GOP critics; scale back deportations to energize Hispanic voters who came out for him overwhelmingly in 2008 and 2012; and keep pressure on Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and GOP leaders to bring immigration reform legislation to the floor.

House Democrats on Wednesday unveiled a discharge petition designed to force a vote on a reform bill. They acknowledged the petition likely wouldn't attract the 218 signatures needed but said the point was increasing the pressure on the Republicans to act.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Thursday that she's ready to sacrifice certain provisions the Democrats want to see in an immigration bill, but vowed to oppose any legislation that explicitly blocks illegal immigrants from becoming U.S. citizens.

"I want this bill desperately. I'm willing to make almost every compromise possible, but we cannot compromise on a pathway to citizenship," she told the members of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. "It cannot have a provision that prevents it from happening."

Biden said passage of comprehensive immigration reform legislation would be a boon to the economy, an argument the administration has made repeatedly.

"If we want a game changer, the single most important thing we can do for our economy and for America's future is pass immigration reform now," Biden said. "I've heard for too damn long how this was going to bankrupt us, and Social Security was going to take a nose-dive, and so on. … Well guess what? It's a game changer financially for the country."

Biden rattled off a list of figures from the Congressional Budget Office about the estimated effects of comprehensive immigration reform on the nation's economy, including predictions it would extend the solvency of Social Security.

"So much for the horror stories," Biden said.

Biden also decried a system where immigrant students receive advanced degrees and then have to leave the country before they can use them.

"We should be stapling a green card to each one of those degrees as they walk across the stage," he said.

"Let this go," Biden said, addressing Boehner. "Let people vote."

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefi...eady-americans

VICE PRESIDENT BINDEN
YOU BETTER LOOK & READ AGAIN THEY ARE NOT AMERICAN'S CITIZEN
ANOTHER THING WE HAVE IMMIGRANTION LAW'S THAT JUST NEED TO BE ENFORCED OR IS THIS TOO MUCH TO ASK DO SOME THING FOR THE USA