PAUL BEDARD: Charge: Obama plan to legalize millions of immigrants ‘disastrous’ to blacks.

President Obama’s much-rumored executive order granting legal status to potentially millions of illegal immigrants will be “disastrous” to African-American job seekers and a slap in the face to others proceeding through the tedious legal immigration process, charges a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

Peter Kirsanow, a black commissioner on the eight-member panel, warned in a letter (below) to Obama this week that giving legal status to undocumented workers will pave the way for them to take the few jobs that blacks, especially African-American men, need.

“I write to remind you of the disastrous effect of illegal immigration on the employment of all Americans, but particularly black Americans,” he wrote to Obama.

“Any grant of legal status will serve as a magnet to prospective illegal immigrants and further depress employment opportunities and wages for African Americans. Given that the labor force participation rate is at an historic low, the unemployment rate is 6.2 percent, and there has been a precipitous decline in household wealth, the timing for such a grant of legal status could not be worse,” he wrote in the letter, provided to Secrets.

Obama hasn’t formally decided what to do on immigration reform, but is planning some form of executive action after he returns from his extended vacation on Martha’s Vineyard Island in Massachusetts.

When we had a (very modest) crackdown on businesses hiring illegals here in Knoxville, businesses quickly replaced Mexican workers with black workers.