Hey, wait: 46 percent of Americans want Obama to delay executive action on immigration

OPINION:

Hey, not so fast: Almost half of Americans - 46 percent - say President Obama should hold off taking executive action on immigration, this according to a USA Today poll released Monday. The nation perhaps waits a little nervously for Thursday night, when the president will offer his big reveal on the situation. Some offer historic perspective and a reality check as the hours go by until then.

“The 1986 immigration law gave amnesty to millions of immigrants but included no border security,” recalls keen-eyed policy analyst Roger Fleming, a former House Judiciary Committee counsel and contributor to PJMedia. “Not much has changed since then. Last year’s Senate bill, S. 744, specifies a path to citizenship, but does not in fact require the border be secured. Here America stands 28 years later with an open border and 11 million additional undocumented immigrants due to a government policy that fails to stop illegal entrants but spends millions on a bureaucratic maze to legally deport them. Our border policy entices people to enter surreptitiously, and then labels them illegal once they’re here.”

So secure the border, he says - high-tech fencing, aerial surveillance and manpower as required. There would even be an added benefit.

“There’d be no more labeling of people in America as illegals. They’d either be here legally or working their way toward legal status. If the world knew our border was secure, there would be little incentive to try to cross it. The human- and drug-smuggling cartels would suffer for it; and fewer would die in vain seeking illegal entry,” Mr. Fleming adds. “This summer Americans saw a snapshot of what has been happening on the border for decades - and they’re not forgetting it. Border security, despite best efforts, is not considered a racist term; and common-sense members from both parties must step up and do what is right by citizens on both sides.”

A lawmaker from a border state also speaks up.

“The President has already made a number of unilateral changes in U.S. immigration policy with disastrous results,” says Sen. John Cornyn.

“What about the people who have been waiting patiently in line complying with our immigration laws to have these millions of other people jump right ahead of them and be given some form of legal status? It’s just not fair to them, and it certainly doesn’t encourage people’s compliance with the rules or the law,” the Texas Republican notes. “Criminal organizations would be one of the biggest beneficiaries of the President’s executive order, which would make it even harder for our friends in Mexico to reduce violence and uphold the rule of law.”