The Patriot Post® · Beefing Up Obama's Pro-Amnesty Agenda

The Obama administration’s intention to force-feed a pro-amnesty agenda to a recalcitrant American public has reached a new low. The Department of Justice (DOJ) recently announced it had reached an immigration-related settlement with Nebraska Beef Ltd., a meat packing company headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska. The DOJ had accused the company of discrimination — because the meat packing company demanded that workers show proof of immigration status to demonstrate they were eligible to work legally in the United States.

The DOJ insisted Nebraska Beef violated the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) because it required “non-U.S. citizens, but not similarly-situated U.S. citizens, to present specific documentary proof of their immigration status to verify their employment eligibility.” Yet the act itself states that “employers may hire only persons who may legally work in the United States (i.e., citizens and nationals of the U.S.) and aliens authorized to work in the U.S. The employer must verify the identity and employment eligibility of anyone to be hired, which includes completing the Employment Eligibility Verification Form (I-9).” Adding insult to injury, the act warns employers that they can be penalized if they fail to complete and/or retain those I-9 forms.

Judicial Watch put this outrage in the proper perspective: “You know the nation is in trouble when a U.S. business gets investigated by its own government for following the law.”

Regardless, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Vanita Gupta, head of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, was adamant. “The department is committed to ensuring that individuals who are authorized to work in the United States can support their families and contribute to our country’s economic growth without facing unnecessary and discriminatory barriers to employment,” she stated. “We will vigorously enforce the law to remove such barriers where we find them, and ensure that affected individuals have a means of seeking relief.”

“Relief” in this case amounts to Nebraska Beef paying $200,000 in a civil penalty settlement, establishing an uncapped back-pay fund for people who lost wages because they could not prove they are in the country legally, and two years of compliance monitoring. The company is also required to train employees on the anti-discrimination provision within the Immigration and Nationality Act and to revise policies within its office.

The anti-discrimination provisions of the act can be seen here. The germane clause states that employers “may not treat individuals differently based on citizenship or immigration status. U.S. citizens, recent permanent residents, temporary residents, asylees and refugees are protected from citizenship status discrimination.” All well and good, save for one seemingly inherent contradiction:

How is a company supposed to determine a potential employee’s status and eligibility to work in the United States without documentary proof?

A 2014 federal audit conducted by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) inspector general revealed the bigger stakes in play here, noting the Obama administration has not only been “inconsistent” in enforcing the provisions of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA), but it reduced the average fine for businesses caught hiring illegals by a whopping 40% between 2009 and 2012. Now the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division is getting in on the act, helping to facilitate the administration’s pro-amnesty agenda.

All Americans should be outraged, but none more so than black Americans. Another disappointing jobs report Friday revealed that only 173,000 jobs were created in August, despite predictions of 220,000. And though the unemployment rate dropped to 4.4% for whites, a drop of 0.2% from July, black unemployment is 9.5%, up 0.4% from July.

Unfortunately, both of those figures hardly tell the real story. The daunting reality is that a record-setting 94,031,000 Americans were not in the labor force last month, and the labor participation rate is 62.6% — the lowest level since 1977. When those people are counted, the overall unemployment rate, trumpeted to be 5.1%, more than doubles to 10.3%. Even worse, wages for all American workers have declined from the time the so-called recovery began in 2009, right through 2014 — with lowest paid workers taking the biggest hit.

All while Obama champions amnesty for million of illegals who would drive those wages even lower — for as long as a decade.

In short, the fundamental transformation, or more accurately, the balkanization of America, continues. Assimilation has been tossed on the ash heap of history, in favor of the multiculturalist “celebrating our differences” nonsense that is tearing this nation apart. The transnationalists who would abet our descent into Third World-ism for cheaper labor and reliable big-government votes must be thoroughly rejected by an electorate that still treasures national sovereignty. And it’s about time presidential candidates other than Donald Trump heartily embrace the one irrefutable statement he has made (echoing Ronald Reagan, by the way): A nation without borders is no nation at all.