Thursday, April 9, 2009

President Obama will Address Immigration Reform This Year! Some Republicans May be Receptive!

New York Times reports:
Obama to Push Immigration Bill as One Priority
While acknowledging that the recession makes the political battle more difficult, President Obama plans to begin addressing the country’s immigration system this year, including looking for a path for illegal immigrants to become legal, a senior administration official said on Wednesday.
Mr. Obama will frame the new effort — likely to rouse passions on all sides of the highly divisive issue — as “policy reform that controls immigration and makes it an orderly system,” said the official, Cecilia Muñoz, deputy assistant to the president and director of intergovernmental affairs in the White House.
Mr. Obama plans to speak publicly about the issue in May, administration officials said, and over the summer he will convene working groups, including lawmakers from both parties and a range of immigration groups, to begin discussing possible legislation for as early as this fall.
Some White House officials said that immigration would not take precedence over the health care and energy proposals that Mr. Obama has identified as priorities. But the timetable is consistent with pledges Mr. Obama made to Hispanic groups in last year’s campaign.
He said then that comprehensive immigration legislation, including a plan to make legal status possible for an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants, would be a priority in his first year in office. Latino voters turned out strongly for Mr. Obama in the election. “He intends to start the debate this year,” Ms. Muñoz said.
But with the economy seriously ailing, advocates on different sides of the debate said that immigration could become a polarizing issue for Mr. Obama in a year when he has many other major battles to fight. Opponents, mainly Republicans, say they will seek to mobilize popular outrage against any effort to legalize unauthorized immigrant workers while so many Americans are out of jobs.

Just last month, Mr. Obama openly recognized that immigration is a potential minefield.
"I know this is an emotional issue; I know it’s a controversial issue,” he told an audience at a town meeting on March 18 in Costa Mesa, Calif. “I know that the people get real riled up politically about this." But, he said, immigrants who are long-time residents but lack legal status “have to have some mechanism over time to get out of the shadows.”
The White House is calculating that public support for fixing the immigration system, which is widely acknowledged to be broken, will outweigh opposition from voters who argue that immigrants take jobs from Americans.
GOP cools on a hot-button issue
. "Romney believes that one way to attract more minorities to the GOP is to pass immigration reform before the next election, saying the issue becomes demagogued by both parties on the campaign trail." The article also quotes Romney as saying, "We have a natural affinity with Hispanic-American voters, Asian-American voters."
. Richard Nadler: Conservatives should stop trying to remove 12 million illegal aliens from American soil, either by rounding them up or by inducing them to “self-deport.” In the Southwest, the West, the Northeast, and Florida, attempts to remove illegals have diminished the conservative movement, transforming a governing majority into a structural minority. To continue the effort will damage the conservative cause even more among Hispanics and entrepreneurs.

8 comments:

. said...

I wonder if this will be McCain's immigration bill re-born?

That would be ironic....

Tamale Chica said...

Dee,

My LA cuz sent me this article about US citizens being detained by ICE.

Holy Frijoles!!

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-citizen9-2009apr09,0,3056253.story

ultima said...

Obama bends over

Anonymous said...

There is not going to be any amnesty so quit dreaming. Americans said no before and by God we will say no again only this time it will be much more vitriolic. These Mexicans have pushed us too far now and it's war.

Dee said...

evil Anon,
You sound just like Poplawsky or Keith Luke or Dannie Baker!
Shame on you!

Defensores de Democracia said...

The 2010 Census coming soon

But there are millions of worries from Latinos and other immigrants or foreigners, even if they have become citizens. Latinos are "maliciosos" and that Spanish word means that they suspect bad intentions of those that approach with sugar coated words of "We will not use the census data to persecute you or to arrest you and deport latinos to their countries of origin"

With so much Hate in the air, some people won't want to give information, even if the Government Official speaks Spanish and swears that the data won't be used for deportations.

With thousands of people in NeoGulags, credibility will be at the lowest peak, and "Malicia" ( Unbelief, Suspicion, Negativity ) will be at the highest.

"Malicia" also means distrust, mistrust and suspecting bad intentions of the other person, the "malicioso" suspects that he is a victim and that he is lied by another shrewd person.

During the Administration of Herbert Hoover in 1929 hundreds of thousands of Latinos ( even citizens ) were deported out of the USA, some put the figure over a million, and that meant impoverishment, dislodgement and dispossession, a true Progrom. Many of the "Deportados" did not know how to speak Spanish and perceived Mexico as very foreign to them. They felt like "strangers in a strange land", some struggled for years to return to America.

The Memories of the "Deportados" linger in the communities.

After all that has happened, Latinos and others have seen the Racism and the Violence.

Milenials.com

Vicente Duque

green card visa said...

If we can stop using this ICE tactic and just focus on the felonious illegal immigrants everything would run a lot smoother.

Green Card Visa said...

Now here we are, almost a year later, and there has still been painfully little movement on any sort of immigration policy by this administration. I am sure, if asked, that Obama could give a whole slew of reasons for why he has not acted and done what he said he would do. The question is, are any of them actually acceptable answers?

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