Barack Obama Quotes
Immigration has always been a concept that inflames passions.
Barack Obama, 44th President of the United States (Democrat, IL), United States Senator (Democrat, IL), January 2013, Quoted on PBS Washington Week in Review. February 1, 2013
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
JOUAM was a nativist workingmen's organization founded in 1853 to resist the competition for jobs from immigration. See related quote for membership criteria. At its peak it had over 200,000 members. “Mechanics” was the term used for a wide variety of skilled craftsmen from plumbers to bricklayers. JOUAM is the oldest fraternal order in America.
When he became a national candidate, he flip flopped and modified this position to accommodate the strong anti-immigration preference of most of the Republican right wing base.
The United States policies at the time encouraged tens of thousands of foreigners to study in America—especially mathematics, science and engineering. Then after they graduate we expel them despite the fact that we have a great labor shortage of these technical skill areas. The result is that the American economy lags in one of its most important areas, high technology for lack of qualified people to fill the jobs. Larger American companies then set up operations overseas and hire many of the people who we kicked out, so they do not pay any taxes to America. The best and most ambitious of these American trained foreigners, then start their own businesses abroad, create many jobs that never benefit Americans and then sell to America competing with American firms. New York City alone had tens of thousands of open jobs at very high salaries for which there were no Americans to fill while the New York schools had trained enough foreigners to fill the jobs, but our national policies forced the best and the brightest to leave and compete with us.
He was referring to North African and other third world immigrants. France’s second largest ethnic group had become Muslims from North Africa. But they were only 10 percent of the population.
Ironically, where national quotas have been used in American immigration policy, it has rarely been used to keep nationals of countries with which we were having difficulty, out. In almost all cases, the national quotas have been used to discriminate against racial and religious minorities in America. Asians, Blacks, Hispanics, Catholics, Mormons and Jews have been the most frequent groups targeted. Even when we were in the midst of the Cold War, American policy was to accept immigrants from the Soviet Union and Cuba enthusiastically.
Barack Hussein Obama II is an American politician and attorney who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the United States. He previously served as a U.S. senator from Illinois from 2005 to 2008 and as an Illinois state senator from 1997 to 2004.
