The congressional Republicans have made a lot of accusation about President Obama regarding undocumented immigration. They accuse him of abandoning enforcement at the border, and have even claimed that the president is encouraging illegal immigration. It is obvious what they are doing. They are trying to scare the American people into voting for Republicans -- and they don't mind telling some lies to accomplish that.
The truth is that very little of what they say has a basis in fact. The charts above represent the reality -- a reality the Republicans don't want you to know. They say the president has abandoned border enforcement, but as the top chart shows, there are more Border Patrol Agents (especially on our Southern border) than was ever there during the Bush administration (or any administration before that).
But the number of agents is not the only factor regarding border security. There is also the matter of deportations, and as the second chart shows, there have been more deportations in every year of the Obama administration than in any year of the Bush administration (or any previous administration). If they told the truth, the GOP would have to admit that President Obama has done a better job of carrying out the GOP policy of closing the border and deporting undocumented immigrants than any Republican president has ever done.
I'm not saying the Obama policy of border security and increased deportations is necessarily the right approach -- just that he is doing what the Republicans want done, and gets no credit for it. And there is one other fact the GOP doesn't want Americans to know -- that the flood of new undocumented immigrants they worry so much about is simply not happening. As the third chart shows, the net immigration numbers have dropped to zero (meaning there are as many (if not more) undocumented immigrants leaving the country as there are entering it. This chart stops at 2010, but there is no reason to believe that has changed -- since the economy is still limping along and millions remain without jobs.
Those are the facts. But the Republicans aren't interested in facts. They are only interested in trying to embarrass the president and scare the American people. While it is true that there are still more than 11 million undocumented immigrants living in this country, the Republicans also don't want to do anything about that (except deport more people). These immigrants give more to this country than they take (including paying billions of dollars in taxes at all levels), and we should be reforming our immigration laws to give them legal status and a path to citizenship.
The congressional Republicans should be ashamed of themselves for blocking immigration reform and lying to the American people. Unfortunately, I don't think they even have the capacity to feel shame -- and that means they'll likely go on lying and blocking all efforts to reform immigration.
