Time for Obama to Deliver Another Base-Pleasing Sop

This one is a mini-amnesty for illegal aliens.

Obama administration officials announced on Friday that they will propose a fix to a notorious snag in immigration law that will spare hundreds of thousands of American citizens from prolonged separations from immigrant spouses and children.

The change that immigration officials are offering would benefit United States citizens who are married to or have children who are illegal immigrants. It would correct a bureaucratic Catch-22 that those Americans now confront when their spouses or children apply to become legal permanent residents.

Although the tweak that officials of the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services are proposing appears small, immigration lawyers and advocates for immigrants say it will make a great difference for countless Americans. Thousands will no longer be separated from loved ones, they said, and the change could encourage Americans to come forward to apply to bring illegal immigrant family members into the legal system.

It’s not a “tweak” as the NY Times dubs it, it’s a change that to some extent removes the incentive for obeying immigration law at all.

Look, I don’t like the US immigration system. I’m married to a legal immigrant, so I’ve personally dealt with the system and it’s not good. In fact, it’s bad. It’s fairly expensive, definitely bureaucratic and somewhat abusive to those who are following the law. And by “abusive,” I’m referring to the petty tyrants who inhabit the immigration bureaucracy. They have a lot of power over law-abiding immigrants, and they know it, and they often show it by being rude and by slowing the process down. It’s the DMV on a particularly bad day, pretty much every day. Obama’s “tweak” won’t change that.

But that reality makes moves like this one even more irksome. Those who follow the law are played for suckers by those who don’t, but whose own personal amnesty is engineered to help King Barry keep his crown. Obama is trying to cast himself as the great benefactor of Latinos for granting this dispensation, despite the fact that his other policies are still making it harder for citizens and legal immigrants of all backgrounds to start a business, hold a job, own their own home and have a free life.