September 29, 2009
Democrats Agree: Health Care Reform Should Cover Illegals
President Obama recently exhibited some clumsiness trying to play a shell game on illegal immigrants and health care reform:
Even though I do not believe we can extend coverage to those who are here illegally, I also don't simply believe we can simply ignore the fact that our immigration system is broken," Mr. Obama said Wednesday evening in a speech to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute. "That's why I strongly support making sure folks who are here legally have access to affordable, quality health insurance under this plan, just like everybody else.Other Democrats are being more straight forward:Mr. Obama added, "If anything, this debate underscores the necessity of passing comprehensive immigration reform and resolving the issue of 12 million undocumented people living and working in this country once and for all."
Fearful that they're losing ground on immigration and health care, a group of House Democrats is pushing back and arguing that any health care bill should extend to all legal immigrants and allow illegal immigrants some access.The Democrats, trying to stiffen their party's spines on the contentious issue, say it's unfair to bar illegal immigrants from paying their own way in a government-sponsored exchange. Legal immigrants, they say, regardless of how long they've been in the United States, should be able to get government-subsidized health care if they meet the other eligibility requirements.
"Legal permanent residents should be able to purchase their plans, and they should also be eligible for subsidies if they need it. Undocumented, if they can afford it, should be able to buy their own private plans. It keeps them out of the emergency room," said Rep. Michael M. Honda, California Democrat and chairman of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus....Mr. Honda and his allies, though, say illegal immigrants should be allowed to pay for insurance if they can afford it, even if it comes through a government-established exchange. As a generally young, healthy part of the population, illegal immigrants could help reduce overall costs for those who buy into health exchange plans, the lawmakers said.
The game is over on this anyway.
The US-born children of illegal immigrants are US citizens as a matter of right. These children have been slowly reaching the voting age. A substantial number will come of age within the next 4-8 years. At that point, they will be large enough of a voting block to vote themselves control of immigration reform and the public treasury.
They will first vote for comprehensive immigration "reform" which will make their illegal immigrant parents US citizens retroactive to the date they first splashed across the Rio Grande.
Next, they will "reform" social security by allowing these freshly minted, retroactive US citizens to partake of the social security retirement system. They will do so by allowing these new US citizens to be paid retirement benefits based on the benefits they would have received if their employers had not paid them under the table. The reform advocates will argue that this is fair because it was not the fault of the illegal immigrants that their nasty, white, rich employers exploited them by not making contributions to the social security system on their behalf.
I can already see a teary-eyed Rep. Kennedy croaking out in his best strained voice,"Why should the crimes of the employers be visited upon these innocent, new US ctizens?"
Give up. We have lost the war. Now you know why the liberals have been delaying any immigration reform. They want to wait until the children of the illegals get to voting age.
Posted by: ASadUSCitizen at September 29, 2009 12:11 PM"Give up. We have lost the war."
If you really feel that way, consider signing up for the Free State Project. All of us within the movement realized a long time ago that this country is so far gone to authoritarianism and socialism that it's hardly worth saving anymore.
Let the rest of the country sink itself. New Hampshire will be free.
Posted by: Dan at September 29, 2009 12:35 PMNow do we all yell "YOU LIE" ?
Posted by: Chris at September 29, 2009 1:06 PMIts sad that Obama thinks that he really isn't lying. Clearly, it is his intention to allow illegal immigrants into any new national health care system. He thinks that since he'll be back-dooring the illegals into the health care system via making them legal resident/US citizens under immigration reform, he technically won't have lied when he said that he wasn't going to allow illegals into any new health system. Obama's plan is open and obvious. And yet we have blind and dumb commentators like Bill O'Reilly who don't see this coming....And we have so-called Republicans who see this coming but do the wink-wink because they secretly support allowing illegals into any health care system. My God. What a failure of conservative leadership.
Posted by: BlindWillieMcTelltheTruth at September 29, 2009 1:31 PMIn Canada, they clearly understand that if they want national health insurance, they must aggressively enforce immigration laws. In the UK, Labor (under Tony Blair) came to the same conclusion.
This is not a hard one to understand, folks, for very obvious reasons...
Posted by: John at September 29, 2009 11:33 PM