Remember What Coretta Scott King Thought About Amnesty

Originally published September 2, 2014

In another year of chronically high unemployment among America’s black communities, it’s important we remember the tireless work of the late civil-rights champion and former congresswoman Barbara Jordan. Ms. Jordan was picked by President Clinton to lead the bipartisan U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform that 20 years ago this month published a major report calling for stiff penalties against employers that hire illegal aliens, an expansion of the grounds for deportations, and a complete end to future mass amnesties. In the face of tough opposition from La Raza [La Raza means The Race] and other open-borders lobbyists, the introduction of Ms. Jordan’s report declared, “It is both a right and a responsibility of a democratic society to manage immigration so that it serves the national interest.” That the Commission’s recommendations were mostly ignored by Congress was in large part due to Ms. Jordan’s tragic death from leukemia soon after the report’s release.

Where have great black leaders like Ms. Jordan gone? In an era of widespread black joblessness, black leaders that are willing to split from the Hispanic and cheap labor-lobbies on immigration are needed more than ever. Currently, the national unemployment rate among young blacks is 35 percent. That rate climbs dramatically in high-immigration areas, such as Chicago, where, according to the Chicago Urban League, it’s reached a staggering 92 percent...

Harvard economics professor George Borjas says that between 1980 and 2000, immigration reduced the wages of all American workers by 4 percent, with even higher wage reductions for high school drop-outs and black workers...

In 1991, Coretta Scott King, along with members of the NAACP and Congressional Black Caucus, signed a letter to Senator Orin Hatch arguing against his proposed repeal of sanctions against employers who hire illegal aliens because of the “the devastating impact the repeal would have on the economic condition of un- and semi-skilled workers — a disproportionate number of whom are African American and Hispanic.” Their efforts were unsuccessful, however, such sanctions have never really been enforced. That every one of the 43 black Democrats currently in the House and Senate has taken the opposite position in the latest amnesty talks suggests that they don’t fully appreciate their own history...