Contrary to a viral story making the rounds on some conservative websites, President Obama didn’t explicitly encourage illegal aliens to vote in Tuesday’s presidential election in a recent YouTube interview.
He did, however, encourage Latinos who can vote legally to be the “voice” for all those who can’t – even going so far as to say you have a greater responsibility to vote if you’ve got family members who are living here illegally. Oh, and he added that no one's going to come and deport your illegal alien family afterwards.
All of which, frankly, isn’t much better.
Here's a transcript of Obama's conversation with Gina Rodriguez on the YouTube channel "mitu."
RODRIGUEZ: Many of the millennials, Dreamers, undocumented citizens -- and I call them citizens because they contribute to this country -- are fearful of voting. So if I vote, will immigration know where I live? Will they come for my family and deport us?
OBAMA: Not true. And the reason is, first of all, when you vote, you are a citizen yourself. And there is not a situation where the voting rolls somehow are transferred over and people start investigating, et cetera. The sanctity of the vote is strictly confidential in terms of who you voted for. If you have a family member who maybe is undocumented, then you have an even greater reason to vote.
RODRIGUEZ: This has been a huge fear presented especially during this election.
OBAMA: And the reason that fear is promoted is because they don't want people voting. People are discouraged from voting and part of what is important for Latino citizens is to make your voice heard, because you're not just speaking for yourself. You're speaking for family members, friends, classmates of yours in school...
RODRIGUEZ: Your entire community.
OBAMA: ... who may not have a voice. Who can't legally vote. But they're counting on you to make sure that you have the courage to make your voice heard.
Rodriguez, for her part, seems to be pretty confused about whether illegal alien "DREAMers" can vote, so I'll help her out: they can't. Persons who are in the United States illegally can’t lawfully cast a ballot, and doing so is a form of voter fraud. So there’s that.
But Obama’s response to her question is even more problematic, and for a host of reasons. First, while the president does briefly mention (kind of) that only legal citizens can vote, he doesn’t verbally re-enforce the fact that undocumented aliens can’t vote, and that they shouldn't take illegal actions to try.
Obama also encouraged Latino citizens to elect politicians who will support and reward illegal immigration. But not only does he openly state that illegal aliens who are living in clear violation of U.S. law are “counting on” legal citizens to vote for pro-amnesty politicians, but the president also suggests that not doing so would be a betrayal of one’s fellow Hispanics.
In fact, Obama actually suggests that a person with illegal alien family members has an even greater reason to vote than an American citizen whose relatives aren’t living in direct opposition to the law.
This rhetoric not only encourages people to elect lawmakers who will openly flout our nation's laws (which seems antithetical, yet unsurprising), it also assumes that all Latino citizens support illegal immigration – which isn’t true. (Case in point: here’s a legal Mexican-born immigrant who disagrees with it pretty strongly.)
In fact, Gallup noted in a 2015 poll that Hispanic support for a pathway to citizenship for illegal aliens has dropped nearly 10 percentage points since 2006. A more recent poll showed only 18 percent of Hispanics said they favored increasing the number of immigrants allowed into the U.S. in general.
If you care to watch, here's the full interview between Rodriguez and Obama (which covers other exciting topics like why Americans should fear the "Powers that Be" and unsubstantiated horror stories of black people being bullied at the polls).