Evidently Obama’s political technicians have analyzed the blowback from their release of illegal aliens to terrorize Americans into accepting tax hikes, and decided they still have a chance of turning public fury against their political opponents, because according to the Daily Caller we’re going to get more of it:
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano promised to release more illegal immigrants into the United States, saying the budget sequester has left her no choice.
Several hundred detainees have already released because of the sequester, she insisted. They were released on bail, or because their legal status had changed, she said.
“We’re going to continue to do that … for the foreseeable future,” Napolitano said at a March 4 breakfast meeting hosted by Politico. “We are going to manage our way through this by identifying the lowest risk detainees, and putting them into some kind of alternative to release.”
She’s not even being honest about what has transpired so far, since news reports indicate a stunning 2,000 detainees have already been turned out, with another 3,000 to come. Remember the brief period, at the end of last week, when Team Obama was floating the excuse that this was all a terrible mistake made by that one obscure bureaucrat who got retired?
One of Napolitano’s predecessors, Tom Ridge from the Bush Administration, who is now a professional activist for comprehensive immigration reform, fretted that dwelling upon just how many thousands of criminals have been released into the public will distract us from a proper focus on “solving” the problem by re-defining it out of existence:
“The job of the secretary of Homeland Security … with regard to securing the border would be a heck of a lot easier if the U.S. Congress would forget about the partisanship and come up with a broad-based, comprehensive immigration plan,” Ridge complained.
“Story ends right there,” said Ridge, who is now a consultant to various business groups, and a board member of the American Action Forum.
The forum is a business-linked advocacy group that is promoting the pending immigration rewrite. It is chaired by Fred Malek, a GOP donor and activist, who owns the Thayer Lodging Group. The group owns several hotels, some in partnership with a Chinese hotel firm.
Ridge’s complaint was backed by Napolitano. “Ditto, absolutely,” she said.
But another former Homeland Security director, Michael Chertoff, made the point that this careless attitude toward immigration enforcement and national security will only make the public less willing to go along with comprehensive immigration reform. We might also factor in the insistence of some reformers on treating those who take citizenship seriously as xenophobes. The overall picture is of a government establishment that isn’t very interested in performing duties that bring no immediate political or financial rewards, and is openly hostile towards those who find this attitude unacceptable.
Citizenship itself is downgraded in the process. If government is all about fulfilling the ambitions of the ruling class without much regard for their nominal duties – as evidenced by releasing thousands of prisoners in a naked effort to intimidate the public into handing over more tax money, rather than insisting on a 2.3 percent spending cut – what example does that set for our prospective body of provisional citizens? The business of government is increasingly focused on what the empowered can extract from taxpayers, rather than what duties they are solemnly obliged to perform.
