OP ED BY NAN EDITORIAL TEAM
News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Thurs. Nov. 20, 2014: As President Barack Obama gets ready today to reveal his immigration executive action reprieve plan for undocumented immigrants across the U.S., Utah Republican Congresswoman-elect Mia Love can’t help but show her hypocrisy on the issue.
Love, born Bourdeau in Brooklyn NY, yesterday told the hosts of “Fox and Friends” that the President’s long awaited plan is ‘unilateral executive amnesty,’ and looks “more like a dictatorship” than a democracy.
Her comments are contradictory as it was Love’s birth in the United States that allowed her Haitian-born parents to legally stay in the country and later become U.S. citizens.
Her mother Maxime Bourdeau was quoted recently by the Salt Lake Tribune as saying: “I always tell Mia, ‘You are my gift because you are born here.’ … Mia is a citizen born in this country and at that time the country was favorable for children.”
The comment, the paper says, refers to an immigration law that was set to expire on Jan. 1, 1976, just 25 days after Mia was born.
It benefited immigrants from within the Western Hemisphere who had a child in the United States. All Love’s family had to do then was register her birth with the State Department and get preferential treatment in getting their green card, for the entire family.
The family had fled the Papa Doc regime to the U.S. on tourist visas, which means at some point they would have became undocumented migrants, much like the 11 plus million people currently living in the United States.
They have all come here for a better life, much like Love’s parents and are contributing to the coffers of this country without taking much back in return. They pay taxes and get no refunds or social services back.
The reality is that had it not been for that law, Love’s parents would have been undocumented until she turned 21 and would then have been able to petition for them as a U.S. citizen.
For the record, Mrs. Love, is what her own party would call “an anchor baby,” a child who was born in this country and allowed her parents to stay – something the very conservative base she is a part of have sneered and yahooed about.
If Love’s own party members would allow an up or down vote on immigration in the House today, the President would not have to use executive power to give reprieve to millions. He would sign the bill immediately into law and we would solve the issue. So its further hypocrisy to say: “This is not about the president. It’s about the American people, and what the American people want the president to do. The American people want Congress to work with the president, want the president to work with Congress so that we can be compassionate, so that we can create a uniform rule of naturalization.”
Really Mrs. Love?
The fact is that executive power was used by former Republican Presidents Ronald Regan and George H. W. Bush to do exactly what President Obama should have done 500 days ago after John Boehner and his ballyhoos failed to act.
It was not dictatorial then and it’s not now!
Mr. President, go big tonight and show the elephants who the real boss is. Let’s get it on and help bring millions out of the shadow just like that short lived law did for Mia Love’s family. That’s real democracy – giving everyone a fair shot, especially millions who have paid their dues already.
