With financial reform and health care overhaul in the rearview mirror, President Barack Obama has taken up the next big untouchable issue in American politics: immigration reform.
This week, the president called for a comprehensive immigration reform bill at the appropriately patriotic venue of American University.
Obama told an audience of 250 religious, business, labor and community leaders, law enforcement officials and elected politicos that—while the nation’s borders need hemming—America’s legacy as a nation of immigrants must be preserved.
Obama didn’t offer a detailed timeline or unveil any new shift in policy. The president laid out the challenges and obligations that befall a nation whose immigrants, in his words, have “made America the engine of the global economy and a beacon of hope around the world.”
The U.S. immigration policy is a perennial work-in-progress: 11 million illegal immigrants call the United States home, with 500,000 more expected to enter the country this year.
While Obama recognizes that deporting 11 million illegal immigrants “would tear at the very fabric of this nation,” he knows that concerns over national security, jobs, and strained health care, education, and welfare budgets have stewed a legislative pickle for Congress.
In his address, Obama pressed his opposition party to come to the table for immigration, stating “reform that brings accountability to our immigration system cannot pass without Republican votes. That is the political and mathematical reality.”
Obama asked for balance between the poles that stake out the divisive issue. "Immigrants have always helped to build and defend this country," he said. "Being an American is not a matter of blood or birth. It’s a matter of faith, of shared fidelity to the ideas and values that we hold so dear."
The POTUS didn’t advocate mass amnesty for all 11 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. He did beat the drum on the Dream Act, legislation that would grant conditional status to illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. before the age of 16.
“We should stop punishing innocent young people for the actions of their parents by denying them the chance to stay here and earn an education and contribute their talents to build the country where they’ve grown up. The DREAM Act would do this, and that’s why I supported this bill as a state legislator and as a U.S. senator—and why I continue to support it as president.”
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