More on the President’s Speech: “Mr. Obama’s Immigration Promise”

America's Voice Blog

Posted 07/06/10 at 09:21am

Last week, America's Voice founder and Executive Director Frank Sharry responded to the President's speech in a video message to supporters:

He stressed that the speech was an important moment to reassert federal leadership on immigration, and he encouraged reform supporters to sign the petition to the White House and Congress to pass the DREAM Act -- as a down payment on full, comprehensive reform.

The New York Times ran a compelling editorial on immigration last week, following the President's speech, entitled, "Mr. Obama’s Immigration Promise:"

President Obama’s first major speech on immigration had the eloquence and clarity we have come to expect when he engages a wrenching national debate. In declaring the welcome of strangers a core American value, in placing immigrants at the center of the nation’s success and future, Mr. Obama’s exhortation was worthy of the late Senator Edward Kennedy, whose memory he respectfully summoned on Thursday. “Anybody can help us write the next great chapter in our history,” he said, regardless of blood or birth.

The editorial continued by qutoting President Obama on what policies we should not pursue: "Our nation “has the right and obligation to control its borders,” he said, but sealing off that vast space with troops and fences alone is a fantasy. And no amount of security at the border does anything about the undocumented 11 million who have already crossed it. Mr. Obama called for enabling these potential Americans to “get right with the law,” and for fixing the system of legal immigration, which is too inefficient for the country’s own good"

It included the President's discussion of Arizona's new immigration crackdown, which he has called "misguided" on several occasions. The editorial concluded by acknowledging Republican obstruction on the matter but placing much of the responsibility to reform immigration squarely in the Administration's court:

In promising to end the chaos into which immigration has collapsed (“this administration will not just kick the can down the road,” he said), Mr. Obama has laid out an ambitious goal. He urged Congress to help him pass a bill, particularly Republicans who supported bipartisan reform under President George W. Bush but who now have a united front against reform.

But Mr. Obama’s call to action applies not just to Congress but to himself as well. He neatly defined the obstacles to a comprehensive bill: the Republican senators who have abandoned bipartisanship and taken the extreme position of opposing any immigration reform that is common-sense and practical.

But Mr. Obama has presidential powers, and he should use them. He has given the border more troops. Now he should seek to lift the burden of fear from peaceable immigrant communities. His administration is widely expected to bring a lawsuit soon challenging the deeply unjust Arizona law. Mr. Obama, a constitutional scholar, could have written the complaint himself, but his address did not mention a lawsuit.

Mr. Obama should not suspend all enforcement against illegal immigrants. But he can reset the administration’s enforcement priorities to focus on dangerous and convicted criminals and rein in the operations that his Department of Homeland Security has promoted that enable local law enforcement to engage in the racial profiling he rightly denounces.

Mr. Obama appealed to middle of the debate, to Americans who crave lawfulness but reject the cruelty symbolized by Arizona’s new law. We hope his words spur the beginning of Congressional action. But in the hot summer to come, when police officers in Arizona start pulling people over, and tension grows and other states follow its bad example, let’s hope his administration also is ready to show the determination to protect the resented newcomers whose rights and dignity he so powerfully defended on Thursday.

An important message at a critical time.

Today, the Washington Post announces that the Justice Department appears ready to file suit over Arizona -- the news is spreading on MSNBC, CNN, and other news sites:

The measure has drawn words of condemnation from President Obama and Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and opposition from civil rights groups. It also has prompted at least five other lawsuits. Arizona officials have urged the Obama administration not to sue.

We'll have more on the story as it develops.