Unintended, Intended, or Just Plain Stupid?

Oh, those wacky Gruberites who foisted Obamacare on us.  They have made it almost impossible to determine whether some of its outcomes are intended, unintended, or that its authors were just plain stupid -- or crazy like a fox.

We now learn from the Washington Times and elsewhere that illegal immigrants were ineligible for the Obamacare subsidy, and more importantly, businesses which hire them are not penalized if they don't offer them health insurance.  That was merely a quirk when illegal immigrants were, well, illegal.  Now, thanks to the EOFH (Executive Order From Heck), they're still illegal, but they won't be prosecuted for it -- or deported.

So whether this was the intent of the law's authors or not, here is the outcome: businesses are now incentivized to lay off citizen employees and hire illegal immigrants to take their jobs.  The article places the value at $3,000 each, the now-avoided fine for not providing medical coverage to each employee.

If I am the citizen at risk -- and thankfully, I am not -- with what I thought was a somewhat secure job, I am aghast.  Sure, my job wasn't necessarily complex (which is why an illegal could replace me at all), but I was showing up on time, doing what was needed the best I could, and providing value for my paycheck and food and shelter for my family.

Well, not so fast.  Some percentage of those in that boat are going to find themselves out of a job, replaced by someone who shouldn't have been in the USA in the first place.  It will happen; the only question is whether the number of American citizens who will be put out of jobs because of it (many of them minorities who blindly voted for Obama based on his skin color) is a handful, or in the hundreds of thousands.  They voted for "hope"; they got "change", and not in the good way.

Of course, that's not the only question.  Was the White House that collectively ignorant that no one behind its unlocked doors realized this was an outcome, as the EOFH was being contemplated?  Where is the staff of the Department of Unintended Consequences Avoidance when you need them?  In fact, where is the entire union movement, which is supposed to be protecting the unionized jobs of those that will be lost?

You add all this up -- a terrible black unemployment rate, with no end in sight, vs. a flood of immigrants, many willing to work their tails off to stay in the USA, no matter what the job, and it only makes sense from a political standpoint.  Obama, it seems here, is willing to let the black unemployment rate stay high because they're going to vote for Democrats anyway, while he opens the doors to a flood of illegals assuming they, too, are going to vote for Democrats.

That being the case, this whole "creating-incentive-for-illegals-to-steal-citizens'-jobs" thing is simply part of an intended whole, and it's all political.  Help the illegal at all costs, to get his eventual vote, since the citizen who loses his job is going to vote for "our" guys anyway.

It's not "unintended."  It's corrupt.  And it's time to call it what it is.


Copyright 2014 by Robert Sutton