At a press conference with Mexico's President Calderón and Canada's Prime Minister Harper, President Obama responded to a question on the timeline for immigration reform by stating that immigration reform was a priority but would have to wait till 2010 after health care, energy, and financial regulation bills were passed.
This is a reversal of his campaign promise to pass immigration reform in 2009. Patience for 2010 is hard to come by when the new administration persists with an enforcement-only strategy that Obama criticized during the campaign trail. Both represent a betrayal to Latino voters who were a key constitutency in delivering the presidency and a majority of Democrats to the US Congress.
What President Obama and other Democrats fail to take into account is that the Latino community can't wait till 2010 for justice to arrive.
The escalation of human suffering continues: civil and human rights violations in detention facilities; families torn apart as armed ICE agents arrest loved ones in their home; increased hate crimes and racial profiling of Latinos; workplace abuses by unscrupluous employers; all of this and more have been a motivating factor for what Latinos expected in 2009: change.
Yet, where is the change? There have been some modest gestures: lifting a 5 year ban for legal immigrant access to S-chip and not including the faulty E-Verify program in the stimulus package (later included in federal contracts).
Yet the two central demands of the immigrant rights movement: stop the deportations and passage of humane immigration reform are nowhere in sight.
Shockingly, the Department of Homeland Security under Secretary Janet Napolitano's leadership continues to support and expand Bush-era enforcement strategies. Despite numerous reports documenting human rights abuses in detention facilities, DHS refuses to create enforcable, independent regulations of the detention system.
For-profit prisons and local and state jails continue to cash in from the criminalization and detention of immigrant workers and youth.
Other administrative reforms have also gone unheeded. DHS refuses to repeal 287G agreements that have led to a vigilante cowboy culture by local and state law enforcement, such as Arizona's Sheriff Arpaio, who has been charged with over a thousand civil rights violations.
DHS has been window dressing workplace raids by pushing I-9 audits; which hurt workers as much any workplace raid. Indeed, the latest "desktop raid" targetted a unionized meatpacking plant. As one immigrant worker observed, "in the fields they never raid; because you have to be truly desperate to work there."
Social Security No Match letters sent to employers, that have less than 1% effectiveness, have yet to be repealed.
It is clear that the Obama Administration has a political strategy that continues to cater to the most virulent xenophobic section of American society and a private prison and defense industry.
Legalization should not be postponed--in an economy that is largely based on consumerism, anything that puts money in the pockets of workers is a good thing. Legalization has been shown to raise wages, increase tax revenues, and encourage people to spend more.
If politicians make promises they don't keep-who should we believe?
We need to believe in ourselves and hold politicians accountable not just in the voting booth but in calls to their office, public forums and meetings. The need for visible protests that force the issue into the public eye cannot stop. Indeed, it must escalate.
Immigration was a losing electoral platform for Republicans in 2006 and 2008. If Democrats don't challenge the dehumanizing policies of the past and deliver humane immmigration reform it will be a bankrupt electoral platform in 2010 and 2012.
This is not about being American. This is about being humane to other fellow world citizens. Although these immigrants are not Americans like we are, we don't have the right to detain those people for years. Obama needs to do something with this problem now. We can't just let them go like we always do!
http://www.newsy.com/videos/putting_immigration_on_the_back_burner
This is a good analysis of this issue. if interested, you should see what's the media are talking about regarding immigration reform.
Obama has his hands full taking on 25% of the American population that is out to undermine the will of the American people on issues such as energy and health care.
It is not enough to have the courage of our Visigoth Celtic Iberian ancestors, we must also have their emotional intelligence to outwit those who wish to continue with ethnic cleansing. Let's not do anything impulsive that we help the enemy. Time and history are on our side.
The planet is bursting with specific ethnicities and races.....
THE MORE YOU HAVE OF ANYTHING _ THE LESS VALUE IS ATTACHED TO SAME.
Animals will have more value than certain people. Clean water will be more valuable than the people fighting for it.
Lions and Tigers will be protected.... not so their human neighbors.
think about it.....
The more Latinos you produce - the less value they will have as individuals.
the more Africans you produce - the less value they will have as individuals.
This isn't about racism.... its a fundamental law of supply and demand.
There is demand for lower animals and pristine environments at the same time 'certain' humans are exploding in numbers.
My money says a mormon in Salt Lake will enjoy greater protection from natural selection than a Kikuyu in Kenya - or a Latino Family in Mexico city.
E-Verify attached to the SAVE ACT must be in-perpetuity, not voluntary, for everybody throughout the United States. Not employees who have just been hired, but everybody who is on the payroll. Begin a nationwide federal mandated 287(g) local police ability to question the legal status of anybody they wish to question? There should be a large formidable force of interior ICE inspectors who make lightening strikes on large and small business. The penalty for hiring illegal aliens should be extremely severe, as they are stealing jobs from Americans and legal residents. Confiscation of assets, heavy fines and certainly prison sentences. Without these pre-requisites, E-Verify will not be efficient enough. NUMBERSUSA for more details Without any question's workers in industry should have be able to call ICE, and leave a message about their suspicions of illegal activity in their working location.
i hope this is one campaign promise he breaks
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free..."
This Mexican says it's time to return the Statue of Liberty to the French. We cannot be an immagrtion country forever. you can say..., well your family has been here since the Mexican revolution..., your grandfather came i 1913. Yep.... and back then there were about 97,000,000 people in our country. Now there are over 300,000,000 and growing. Do we want to keep going until we reach a billion or more? do we want to look like china or india? I say no!
there are limited resources. There's limited water, food hydrocarbons to burn.
despite what anyone thinks or wants to pretend, we cannot be an immgration country forever. if we wait until a crises to have this discussion, we will be doing no one any favors.
the only damage they can do is polling negative... and the GOP will grab that as evidence of Obama FAILING....
yeah - failing to do your dirty work for you without taking the heat for it...
how funny.
Therefore, the revolution did succeed in mellowing out mexico, but it failed to change anything outright. Mexico is still a unoffical caste system that goes top to bottom: white, meztiso, indian.
Mexico can try another revolution, but in the long run, the end result will probably be the same; a white ruling elite ruling over the miztiso and indian masses. this is the american continent.
Why are there no Anglo mestizos in the US? they don't exist because native americans were exterminated by the protestant Anglos. But for the Catholic church native americans in LatAm would have been exterminated just as their cousins in Anglo north america.
what are you people thinking? America cannot help itself if we are burdened with Mexico's problems as well.
Clean up your own system!
Mexico is corrupt to its core. AND the wealthiest Latin country in the hemisphere.
Send em packing! And maybe they will fix their own government.
America cannot insure the western hemisphere and every banana republic which loots the wealth of a nation.
The mindset that Mexico is the only nation that wants to immigrate needs to stop and proponents need to be reminded that peoples from many nations want to (legally) immigrate to the US. Quit trying to jump to the front of the line.
Maybe California could sue Mexico for all the money they've wasted on Mexican citizens.
and BTW, what is Mexico doing to improve? Can't Mexico look to turn a corner and be a place their citizens want to work and live in?
I don't think the Dems are going to have to worry about the Latino vote, as long as entitlement programs are in our future they will vote for them.
And of course they'll harp on selecting A Latina Supreme Court Justice, which was a good choice.