False Start: Obama on Immigration Reform

The following piece was produced through OffTheBus, a citizen journalism project hosted at the Huffington Post and launched in partnership with NewAssignment.Net. For more information, read Arianna Huffington's project introduction. If you'd like to join our blogging team, sign up here If you're interested in other opportunities, you can see the list here.

Dan Kowalski for OffTheBus with a reaction to Immigration Prof Blog's exclusive interview with Senator Obama:

Law school professors who teach immigration law have their own blog. Who doesn't? A few days ago they announced the imminent posting of an "exclusive interview" with Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, promising his views on "difficult immigration issues."

To be honest, when this "exclusive" was announced, I was expecting a video (or at least an audio podcast) of a live give-and-take between skeptical reporters or topic experts asking tough questions and putting the candidate on the spot with little, if any, opportunity for reflection. So I was a bit disappointed to find, instead, a canned written product, giving us nothing we hadn't heard before. I'm sure the Senator approved the final result, but I'm also sure 99% of it was written for him by a staffer. I hope this format will be scrapped when other candidates are "interviewed" by the ImmLawProfs.

What a WOB (waste of bandwidth,) given the possibilities the web now offers in melding audio, video, text, and more. (To be fair, I don't expect law professors to get this web stuff right straight out of the blocks, but perhaps they could take some tips from Jim Chen and Bernard Hibbitts next time around.) And it's a bit surprising Obama's usually media-savvy crew allowed it to happen.

Content? Obama answers softball questions about CIR (comprehensive immigration reform,) family-based immigration visa backlogs, border deaths and his vote for The Fence, immigration courts, local ordinances (the Hazleton case,) assimilation (formerly known as "Americanization," now known as "immigrant integration,") and - spare me - Elvira Arellano .

Beyond the platitudes we've heard before, the nugget that struck me hardest was the Senator's rationale for voting for the Secure Fence Act. He says he voted for it even though it sends two strong messages with which he disagrees - that Mexico is "not our friend" and that an enforcement-only approach can work - because "restoring order in the border region is necessary to winning the American people's support for full reform." That's disingenuous (a word Obama loves) at best, because he knows that no fence, long or short, will restore "order" on the borders. Moreover, it's a candidate's (and a President's) job to lead and persuade, not hide behind "safe" votes. And as I've argued before, trying to "secure the borders" first is putting things backwards.

Obama tries to soften the blow by saying he'll only support more border fencing "where it can help discourage illegal entry and dangerous crossings over desert terrain [uh, where else would they put it?] ...[and only] in coordination and cooperation with local communities." Reaction from border communities to today's release of the Border Patrol's fencing plans should make it abundantly clear that the border fence is nothing more than a pork-barrel boondoggle of the highest order; Obama should suck it up and admit his vote was wrong.

The ImmLawProfs hope to interview more presidential candidates, and I hope they do. But the targets should be pinned down on numbers and categories and definitions: How many (more) green cards do we need? How many (more) non-immigrant visas? How should we re-write the visa categories, grounds of exclusion and removal, detention rules, judicial review rules and hardship waivers to bring the statute into the 21st century. It could get tedious, and long, but as Supreme Court Justice Scalia says, "administrative law is not for sissies."

And please, when other candidates are grilled, scrap the Elvira Arellano question. Call me heartless, but her tale leaves me cold. There are thousands of true stories out there of folks who suffered much more than she did, and without breaking any laws beyond crossing without papers. They would be better examples of our broken system.

The above piece was produced through OffTheBus, a citizen journalism project hosted at the Huffington Post and launched in partnership with NewAssignment.Net. For more information, read Arianna Huffington's project introduction. If you'd like to join our blogging team, sign up here. If you're interested in other opportunities, you can see the list here.

Comments

[creedrapso]

I crossed over the border today (legally) from the US to Mexico. It was late Friday afternoon and I stood for a moment on that 1/2-in/half-out spot and looked at the car traffic stopped going both into and out of the US. I watched exhausted people, on foot, heading home to Mexico after working all week--in hotels, landscaping, housecleaning, etc. There was a flood of young Americans heading to the bars and nightclubs in Mexico. US retirees, in RVs were waiting in line to go to their new, cheaper homes; constructed by destroying the environment along the Mexican coastline.

For that moment, I could really feel the incredible pressure of people forcing their way through that border. It is obvious, there is no way to stop the crossing over: both legal and illegal. Each side has too much the other side wants. If anyone is naive enough to think any amount of restrictions, fences, patrols, guns, or technology is going to stop this, they only need to go stand on that same spot and watch for a little while.

Only sane legislation that rationally allows and regulates the flow in and out for all people: citizens and noncitizens, will ever really work. But that would require sanity, wouldn't it?

[CLR]

Change deport to deportation.

[CLR]

I will only vote for a candidate who will enforce our immigration laws. A candidate who supports: deport of all ILLEGAL immigrants, heavy fines for those who hire ILLEGALS, and the return to the original intent of the 14th amendment.

[researcher]

demos want illegals for the votes.

repubs lobbyists want illegals for the cheap labor to max profits.

catholics want them to fill their pews.

they just want a job because their country is an elitist country and are sending their poor and uneducated to us. smart very smart. cruel but smart.

all of it is about greed capitalist and elitist greed.

no fence will stop them they need a job. they deserve a medal for coming over for the hardships they have to go thru for a low wage job. god bless them.

they are not the problem we are with our greed.

the only way the berlin wall worked was to shoot those that tried to cross over the wall.

dont think we are going to be shooting anyone for trying to find a job.

the fence is a pacifer to the american public and they will take it just like a baby would. just like they did in 86 with reagan.

dumb and dumber americans to buy that one as a solution for our border problems. reagan got you on that one americans.

if there is a more naive and incompetent group of voters in the world than americans I have not found them in my world travels.

[zull2]

I can say one thing about reporters, they do disappoint easily. And some are apparently colossal primadonas.

What, you wanted Obama to laugh maniacally instead of giving an answer? Obama's also a law professor. There's a far greater chance that he read through it VERY carefully before approving it as his message. Unlike a certain president that we currently are suffering out.

It shouldn't be surprising that some people are let down by the occasional "forced" exclusive. These candidates have probably engaged in about 10 times more debates and speaking engagements this early on in the race than any time in US history, and the two leaders on the Democratic side also have to balance that with full time jobs as Senators, voting on incredibly high profile legislation.

[altohone]

Operating on the assumption that a purely liberal solution can get popular support or pass in Congress is disengenious. Ignoring that some controls on our border are necessary is too.

As the only candidate to submit to the questions thus far, your pleas for a multi-media format ignore that the Obama's opponents remain silent but would not hesitate to use footage of any interview against him.