WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama urged Americans on Tuesday to help him push Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform — a divisive issue that lawmakers have been unwilling to take up in recent years.
“I am asking you to add your voices to this debate,” Obama said in a speech near the U.S.-Mexico border in El Paso. “We need Washington to know that there is a movement for reform gathering strength from coast to coast. That’s how we’ll get this done.”
The president said reform should include efforts to secure the border, crack down on businesses that exploit undocumented workers, and require the nearly 11 million immigrants in this country illegally to pay fines and back taxes, learn English and undergo background checks before they can apply for legal status. He also said American farmers need a legal way to hire immigrant workers.
Children of illegal aliens should be allowed to become U.S. citizens if they go to college or join the U.S. military, Obama said. He said he will continue to support DREAM Act legislation, as it’s known, aimed at helping those young immigrants. The full name is Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors.
Critics said the president knows reform efforts are going nowhere in a politically divided Congress and is just trying to rally Hispanic voters to help him win re-election in 2012. Obama received more than 65 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2008.
“President Obama’s immigration speech today was driven by politics and politics alone,” said Rep. Ben Quayle, R-Ariz. “Instead of real solutions and reforms, the president offered finger-pointing and spin.”
Supporters applauded him, saying he’s taking a leadership role on the issue and articulating his plan to fix the nation’s broken immigration system.
“I’m pleased the president laid out a blueprint for comprehensive immigration reform that tackles the problem from all fronts,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.
Immigrant rights’ groups have been pressing Obama to take the lead on the issue for more than two years, and the president could no longer sidestep the issue, political scientists said.
“He can’t duck this issue just because Congress can’t figure out what to do,” said Eric Herzik, chairman of the political science department at the University of Nevada, Reno. “Nothing may happen from his proposals, but then the Congress has to explain that to voters — as much if not more so than President Obama.”
Herzik said Obama is trying to stake out a moderate position between liberals, who call for blanket amnesty and an end to all deportations, and conservatives, who want to pass tough Arizona-style enforcement laws that target illegal immigrants.
“Obama has to find a middle ground,” the professor said.
Obama’s blueprint for reform echoed efforts by Senate leaders in the last Congress to come up with a framework for legislation. That bill died when Republicans and conservative Democrats balked at taking up the controversial issue in an election year. Last-minute efforts to pass the DREAM Act at the end of 2010 also failed.
The president said it is time for Republicans to return to the negotiating table instead of calling for more border security measures.
Republicans say the border must be enforced before anything else changes.
Obama touted his administration’s efforts to secure the Southwest border by increasing the number of Border Patrol agents to about 20,000, deploying unmanned surveillance aircraft from Texas to California, and forging new alliances with Mexico to combat drug cartels.
“We have gone above and beyond what was requested by the very Republicans who said they supported broader reform as long as we got serious about enforcement,” Obama said. “But even though we’ve answered these concerns, I suspect there will be those who will try to move the goal posts one more time. They’ll say we need to triple the border patrol. Or quadruple the border patrol. They’ll say we need a higher fence to support reform.
“Maybe they’ll say we need a moat,” Obama joked. “Or alligators in the moat. They’ll never be satisfied. And I understand that. That’s politics.”
But members of Congress from Southwest border states said their call for more security measures is based on real dangers faced by their constituents amid escalating violence by Mexican drug cartels.
Instead of pushing for comprehensive reform, Obama should endorse a $4 billion bill to put 6,000 National Guard troops and 5,000 more Border Patrol agents on the border, said Arizona Republican Sens. John McCain and Jon Kyl, co-sponsors of the Border Security Enforcement Act.
“President Obama speaks about our broken immigration system,but what about our broken borders?” McCain and Kyl said in a joint statement. “During the president’s first visit to our nation’s southern border, we hope he will finally see first-hand the continued security challenges facing all of those who live along our southwest border. We hear from our constituents on a daily basis, and, while some progress has been made in some areas, they do not believe the border is secure. In fact, a recent GAO report confirmed that the Border Patrol has operational control of only 44 percent of the southwest border
Friday, December 2, 2011
Obama puts pressure on Republicans on immigration reform
10:24 PM
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