An Open Plea to the DA Community: Obama is Our Last Resort

1L-Deferred · 04:17 AM

My friends, I will keep this short.

The current president, our once champion of Dream Act, is no longer effective. We have patiently waited for him to fulfill his promise:

"I will enact CIR in my first year in office."

Sometimes, politics get in the way and presidents cannot win everything. Obama had it rough. However (this is nothing personal against Obama) the reality is that this is no longer an issue of timing not being ripe, but of lack of political will and capital.

I didn't want to believe this, but we got played. He has spent his entire "grace period" in office, when he could have done ANYTHING with super majority in Congress, on Healthcare Reform. He decided to put immigration issue away for another several more years. It's not because he's a bad person or a user. What he does not experience, he cannot relate to with empathy and urgency. That's just life. This was never really his "platform" and still isn't. He never brought up CIR or DA for a fight in his 4 years. "Tweeting" about CIR and DA is more of an insult to us than it is support. Also, now the GOP have endured the "test" of being obstructionists without too much consequences.

Don't get me wrong. GOP is shortsighted in their political strategy: polarize the nation until coherence breaks, then take the largest remaining pieces to gain power. This will bite them back sooner or later in a way they did not envision.

Obama cannot help us. He has no credibility in the immigrant community and his current GOP foes are bolder than ever in greater numbers. I am not a cynic, but I'm also not blind and deaf. We need a new approach and a new leader. I do not pretend to know the answer, but I do know Obama is not our man. He never was. We need a new HOPE; someone who doesn't make grand promises, but has a clear vision.

My hope is that the moderators of this board will realize this sooner and galvanize the activism with innovation. I hope that as a community, we can come to an agreement on my point.