New York Times: Obama to Push for Immigration Reform Despite Bad Economy
There are few issues in American politics that are more divisive and hotly debated than the issue of what to do about America’s 12 million illegal immigrants.
Both sides have demogogued the issue, but because of the high American unemployment rate you can expect the rhetoric from anti-illegal immigration groups to become even more inflammatory as Obama and the Democrats tackle the issue.
The New York Times reports that President Obama wants to go forward with proposals for Comprehensive Immigration Reform that will give individuals currently living illegally in the U.S. a clear path to citizenship:
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.
Here’s just a little taste of the hurdles the Obama administration faces:
“It just doesn’t seem rational that any political leader would say, let’s give millions of foreign workers permanent access to U.S. jobs when we have millions of Americans looking for jobs,” said Roy Beck, executive director of NumbersUSA, a group that favors reduced immigration. Mr. Beck predicted that Mr. Obama would face “an explosion” if he proceeded this year.
“It’s going to be, ‘You’re letting them keep that job, when I could have that job,’ ” he said.
