Hillary Vows to Fight for Illegal Immigrants

Determined to make it blatantly obvious that she will follow the Barack Obama playbook, Hillary Clinton vowed Tuesday to fight for illegal immigrants upon reaching the White House. Speaking to DREAMers at a Las Vegas high school, Clinton said it was time to go further than Obama’s executive orders. “We can’t wait any longer for a path to full and equal citizenship,” she said.

Clinton also released an official campaign statement, promising to strive for immigration reform that “treats everyone with dignity and compassion, upholds the rule of law, protects our border and national security, and brings hard-working people out of the shadows and into the formal economy so they can pay taxes and contribute to our nation’s prosperity.”

In her comments at Rancho High School, Clinton said that Republicans who spoke of citizenship weren’t being forthright. “When they talk about legal status,” she said, “that is code for second-class status.”

Clinton is pandering, of course, but there’s no reason to think she won’t follow through with her promises once taking office. Amnesty has become a high priority for the Democratic Party; they believe that shoring up a generation of Hispanic voters will give them an unbreakable majority in future elections. And though conservatives may not be able to comprehend how this could be possible, Latino voters are actually growing impatient with the Obama plan.

That, more than anything else, should serve as a wakeup call to Republicans like Jeb Bush who think we can pull Hispanics over to the right by going soft on illegals. If Hispanics are losing faith in the Democrats after all Obama has done, what are the chances they are going to embrace a watered-down Republican version of amnesty? Any Republican who argues for a pathway to citizenship is actively supporting the Democrats and nothing else.

It is not possible to “uphold the rule of law” while simultaneously trying to make full citizens out of illegals. The two aims are mutually exclusive. And if a politician must choose between these disparate efforts, the least Americans can demand is that they fight for those who are already citizens. We may be the only country on the planet that fights harder for foreigners than we do ourselves. It defies logic, but there you have it.

We have the right to enforce the law. We have procedures to change that law if it needs changing. Those procedures do not include the president issuing a decree that says the law no longer matters. Until Obama’s executive orders are thrown out, we shouldn’t even be discussing any other aspect of immigration reform. There has been a major breach of the Constitution and the stability of our republic is in mortal jeopardy.

But to Clinton and those who support a pathway to citizenship, criticism of those orders amounts to nothing more than partisan attacks. Racism. Xenophobia. As with most other issues, liberal voters are letting their hearts decide where they stand. That leaves those of us using our brains to shake our heads at what is becoming of the country.