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President Obama Discusses Immigration Reform, Raids, and the DREAM Act

Posted October 26, 2010 by Patrick Young, Esq.
Categories: Federal Immigration Policy

In a discussion with Spanish-language radio personality Piolín on the Los Angeles-based radio show “Piolín por la Mañana,” President Obama was pressed hard on his failure to pass any immigration reform bills in his first 21 months in office.

Piolín told the president that Latino voters were disappointed by the failure. Obama responded that he was “disappointed, too.”

Here’s what the president said:

It’s something that I deeply believe that we’ve got to solve our immigration problem so that we’re both a nation of immigrants and a nation of laws so that people can come out of the shadows, that people who are productive and otherwise law-abiding are able to get on a pathway to citizenship. They pay a fine, pay back taxes, learn English, become part of this beautiful American community of ours. And the fact that we have not got it done is something that frustrates me and I know that it frustrates many people in the community. But I think it’s important for people to understand why it hasn’t gotten done. In the United States Senate, over the last two years, many Republicans who used to support Comprehensive Immigration Reform, like John McCain, decided not to support it and in the Senate, you’ve got a rule that says 50 votes is not enough. That you can’t just pass a law with 50 or 51 votes, you have to have a super majority of 60 votes. We have the majority of Democrats supporting us, so I could easily get 50 votes, Democratic votes, but I’d need some help from our Republican friends. And what happened was we still have 11 Republicans in the United States Senate who voted for Comprehensive Immigration Reform four years ago, but now are not willing to step up. And so the problem that we have is, is that until I can get some cooperation from the other side, then people who are anti-immigration reform can continue to block it.

Piolín pushed Obama, saying, “you were able to pass a healthcare plan and you worked a lot for that. And most of my listeners, they haven’t seen that, the same way that you worked for healthcare for immigration reform. The same effort.”

Obama defended his administration’s efforts:

Well, here’s the difference, Piolín. First of all, on immigration reform, I can’t get 100 percent of Democrats. I can get 90 percent of Democrats, but I can’t get 100 percent. So with healthcare reform, we were just, like, a vote short, just one vote, and so if we’ve worked so hard, we could finally tip it over the edge. Right now on immigration reform, we’re eight votes short or 10 votes short, so we have do the work behind the scenes to build the groundswell of support that can get us then over the finish line. What I don’t wanna do is start this thing like we did several years ago and then it just collapses because if you start it and you don’t finish it, then people say, well, this can’t be done and four years from now, five years from now, we’ll still be talking about immigration reform. What we’re trying to do is to build a consensus in the country that says, this is the right thing to do, that we’ve got some bipartisan support. I’ve met with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus many times, I’ve met with immigration rights groups many times. I have not backed off of this issue…. I am president, I am not king. I can’t do these things just by myself. We have a system of government that requires the Congress to work with the Executive Branch to make it happen. I’m committed to making it happen, but I’ve gotta have some partners to do it…. I’m not asking for 100 percent support from Republicans, I’m not asking even for 50 percent support from Republicans. I just want a little bit of support so that I can actually get this thing passed.

Obama then addressed the question of whether immigration reform is dead:

Well, here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna see how well we do in this election and I think a lot of it is gonna depend on whether we still have some support not only from Democrats, but also Republicans, but they’re gonna be paying attention to this election. And if Latinos sit out the election instead of saying, we’re gonna punish our enemies and we’re gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us, if they don’t see that kind of upsurge in voting in this election, then I think it’s gonna be harder and that’s why I think it’s so important that people focus on voting on November 2.

“But how can you ask for their vote now,” Piolín shot back, saying Latinos felt the Democrats had failed them.

Obama replied:

Piolín, I completely disagree with you on this. With all due respect, even though I’m in your studio. The notion that we haven’t worked it hard is just not true. There is a notion that somehow if I had worked it hard enough, we could have magically done it. That’s just not the way our system works. If I need 60 votes to get this done, then I’m gonna have to have some support from the other side. If the Latino community decides to sit out this election, then there will be fewer votes and it will be less likely to get done. And the other side, which is fighting against this, is not gonna support it, so look, let me say this as an African American. We worked for decades on civil rights. Civil rights didn’t come after one year. It didn’t come after two years. Change isn’t easy. It doesn’t happen overnight. Now, you know, for us to say, oh, it didn’t happen right away and so we’re just giving up and we’re not gonna be involved in the system, that makes no sense. That’s not the history of this country. That’s not the history of change in our own lives. [I]nstead of us giving up, we just have to keep working until it gets done.

Piolín next confronted the president on the record number of immigrants deported in the last year. Obama said that for mass deportations to end, the laws needed to be changed.

Finally, the President was asked if there would be a last ditch effort to pass the DREAM Act during the lame duck session of Congress after the elections.

The president:

What I wanna do is I wanna consult with immigrant rights groups and with the Congressional Hispanic Caucuses to make a strategic decision. It may be that we can pass the Dream Act without comprehensive immigration reform. The only thing I’m concerned about is if we just take that small piece, then maybe it becomes harder for us to get the whole thing and so I would love to see the Dream Act passed right away, but I think it’s very important for us to have a discussion within the community. If we think realistically that’s the only thing that we could get done, then we may make that judgment, but I’m still holding out right now to see if we can get the Dream Act passed and AgJobs passed as part of a broader package so that we allow the 10 to 12 million people who are still living in the shadows to come out and not live in fear. Look, obviously, the Dream Act would be better than nothing and that’s something that I think we’re gonna have to judge. But I don’t wanna make that decision by myself. I wanna be in a discussion with the community and we’re not gonna know until after this election. So, so much depends on what do things look like after the election.

Image courtesy of The U.S. Army via Flickr.

Tags : dream act, immigration reform, obama, piolín, piolín por la mañana, radio

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