Obama, #DACA and #hypocrisy shattered Dreamers

Yeah, I saw Obama call out Trump yesterday on wanting to end DACA.

But, how many of you knew that Obama deported more people than any other president? That he deported more than all 20th-century presidents combined?

Snopes tries to get Obama off the hook by saying this was in part due to a change in definition. It then undercuts itself by admitting this happened under Bush, but doesn't say exactly when, or what his stats were. This is one of those clear cases where Snopes, moving from narrow skepticism fact-checking to political analysis, fails. (Obama passed Bush by 750,000.)

And, if part of it was due to other legislative changes, Snopes, did Obama try to veto any of it? This is the man who kept the "Bush tax cuts" in place, after all.

Otherwise, quick Googling of the mainstream media shows poor data there on the main stories trying to compare Obama and Bush.

I am going to make what is, I think, a reasonable assumption, that the change in numbers of full, fingerprinted deportations vs turnarounds, and any definitional changes, started not too long after 9/11, and therefore, covered most of Shrub's presidenncy.

Therefore, at a minimum, with apples to apples for most of their presidencies, suffice it to say that Obama was at least as bad as Bush, I am very sure, and still probably worse. (If I generously say the two administrations were 80 percent apples-to-apples, Obama still deports 200,000 more.)

So why the sudden concern for DACA and the Dreamers?

Guilty conscience?

I doubt it.

Legacy?

Maybe.

He should be guilty for abandoning state and Congressional Dems in 2010. But, I'm not a Dem.

Anyway, I think that Obama created DACA by executive order precisely to let him get away with deporting more adults, at least as one part of the idea behind that.

You read that right.

Hence my header.

But why?

To appear tough on crime? But, he didn't make that part of his re-election platform.

So, ultimately, I don't know.

I just know he comes off as a hypocrite on this issue.

And, sure, he was facing the tail end of a Shrub Bush spike in illegal immigration, but it declined, modestly, under his own administration. Per that Pew link, more of them were long-term residents in the US, 10 or more years, especially from Mexico, which makes their deportation even worse.

Plus, more and more were from south of Mexico, escaping places like chronically right-wing wracked Guatemala, or the Honduras of the Obama-Clinton coup of 2009. (I originally called it a non-coup, then a semi-coup, then a coup, per Wiki.)

Geithner thinks he’s above financial and immigration law?

Wundebar, but not surprising. President-elect Barack Obama’s Treasury Secretary-designee, Timothy Geithner, allegedly failed to pay FICA taxes for himself for several years. That said, tis true, we have new information that could keep the teapot boiling.

That said, per the Senate Finance Committee (PDF), although audited by the IRS in 2006 over the back taxes for his time working for the International Monetary Fund, Geithner didn’t pony up the amount of back taxes he owed until Dec. 5 of last year, after Obama nominated him.

And, this leads to other questions.

No, Geithner is not a tax lawyer, but did nobody inform him that he would be considered self-employed at IMF? Considering the WSJ claims this isn’t the first such case, isn’t there some responsibility somewhere.

Second, re Obama’s vetting process. Who first spotted this? Did somebody find out Geithner hadn’t paid the back taxes, or did he volunteer the info? Does this have any reflection on the vetting of Bill Richardson?

The immigration issue may or may not be a bit more serious, even though the woman was a legal resident. Not serious from Geithner's part as much as ... how do you let your papers lapse? And, given the update on Geithner's tax info, how much do we trust what he's saying about the nanny?

U.S. immigration jails become more Kafkaesque

People dying without their families even knowing they’ve been arrested, let alone later hospitalized. No oversight and central control of the broader process:

No government body is required to keep track of deaths and publicly report them. No independent inquiry is mandated. And often relatives who try to investigate the treatment of those who died say they are stymied by fear of immigration authorities, lack of access to lawyers, or sheer distance.

Many of these immigrants die in state jails, where they are being held indefinitely before the highly INefficient (except when trampling on environmental legislation) Department of Homeland Security’s subconsulate, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, decides whether to deport or not.

And, in many cases, the reasons these people became “illegals” in the first place is itself Kafkaesque.

U.S. immigration jails become more Kafkaesque

People dying without their families even knowing they’ve been arrested, let alone later hospitalized. No oversight and central control of the broader process:

No government body is required to keep track of deaths and publicly report them. No independent inquiry is mandated. And often relatives who try to investigate the treatment of those who died say they are stymied by fear of immigration authorities, lack of access to lawyers, or sheer distance.

Many of these immigrants die in state jails, where they are being held indefinitely before the highly INefficient (except when trampling on environmental legislation) Department of Homeland Security’s subconsulate, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, decides whether to deport or not.

And, in many cases, the reasons these people became “illegals” in the first place is itself Kafkaesque.