On Friday Homeland Security Security Janet Napolitano announced that “[t]he Obama administration will insist on measures to give legal status to an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants as it pushes early next year for legislation to overhaul the immigration system.”
Yesterday Mickey Kaus discussed four reasons that might not have been such a good idea (with one caveat: “maybe Obama has concluded that health care reform gets more unpopular when voters think about it, so he’s changing the subject…). He asked, for example, “Doesn’t it potentially make 2010 midterm voters more uneasy about Dem overreach?”
Secretary Napolitano addressed this concern in her Friday comments:
In her first major speech on the overhaul, Ms. Napolitano dispelled any suggestion that the administration — with health care, energy and other major issues crowding its agenda — would postpone the most contentious piece of immigration legislation until after midterm elections next November.
Although Kaus mentions Obama’s possible desire to “placate[] Hispanic lawmakers who might be upset at the treatment of illegals in the health bill itself,” neither he nor Napolitano mentioned what might be a greater concern than reservations about “Dem overreach”: the cost of adding “an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants” who, newly legalized, would qualify for inclusion in our imminent (so everyone says) federalized health care system.
But…but…Illegal Aliens already HAVE have a legal status.
What’s the problem?
Unless, of course, Ms. Napolitano means for “The White House” to
impose another para-constitutional “special exception” for “special” interests.
I’d kinda’ like to see non-violent felons voting, carrying firearms, and buying bullets in California, first.