Obama is to Blame for the Failure of Immigration Reform

I'm in 100% agreeement with this excellent post by immigration attorney Charles Kuck, 2008-2009 AILA president.

http://musingsonimmigration.blogspot.com/

Obama is to Blame for the Failure of Immigration Reform

There has been a lot of casting of blame for this last weekend's vote against a sensible and compassionate immigration bill that would have given hope and a future to hundreds of thousands of immigrant children. Most of the pointing fingers direct blame at the Republicans for their "filibuster" of the DREAM Act. Without dispute the Republicans have, in fact, adopted a virulent anti-immigration position that will ultimately lead to minority status for the party. But Republicans are not the reason the DREAM Act failed. Everyone knew that Republicans would not vote for the DREAM Act. The only three Republicans who did vote for the DREAM Act either are leaving Congress or do not have a concern about the right wing of the party. So, if the Republicans are not to blame, who is? President Obama and the Democrats. Really.


Here are 5 reasons why President Obama is to blame for the failure of immigration reform.


1. Five Democratic Senators abandoned the party and voted against the DREAM Act. One other Democratic Senator was attending a Christmas Party. There is no evidence whatsoever that the White House made a single call to these Senators to secure their votes. The DREAM Act was 5 votes short of breaking the "filibuster" and passing cloture. That math is simple enough, no? If these Senators did what their party wanted and needed them to do, the DREAM Act passes. It appears someone dropped the ball.


2. If Democrats were serious about the DREAM Act, why not MAKE the Republicans actually conduct a filibuster? Make than talk ad nausea until the end of the session or until the American public grows tired of the obstructionism?


3. How many speeches did President Obama give endorsing the DREAM Act? None as near as I can find. Yes, he mentioned the DREAM Act on a couple of occasions in other contexts and his Spokesman Robert Gibbs referred to it in press briefings. But, we all saw that when President Obama wants something passed he ADVOCATES for it. Take the Health Care bill for example. How many times did President Obama give speeches urging, demanding, cajoling for passage of the Health Care bill? Oh, about a jillion. Every day in the months leading up to the vote in the Congress there was President Obama on CNN, FoxNews, MSNBC, giving a speech surrounded by uninsured people in urgent need of health care. He was constantly meeting with wavering Senators. Don't you think that had something to do with the passage of the bill? Where was he on Immigration Reform in the fall? One speech! Where has he been for the last two months on the DREAM Act? Missing in action.


4. Enforcement priorities--President Obama has deported more people than President Bush. Period. The theory for the Obama Administration is that if we just enforce the law enough the Republicans will support comprehensive immigration reform. And, advocacy groups allowed President Obama to get away with this strange, irrational theory of enforcement. President Obama is bringing Secure Communities to a police station near you. President Obama is putting employers out of business for not properly dotting all their "i's" and crossing all their "t's " on the worlds most complicated form, the Form I-9. President Obama is opening more private prisons and putting non-criminal foreign nationals in detention centers far removed from their families, lawyers and the real world in an effort to get these folks to give up and not fight their removal. President Obama is unwilling to put forward a working plan for immigration reform, leaving it up to the anti-immigrant crowd to provide Congress draft legislation for doing so.

Had enough? Not yet? Okay


5. Adjudicatory Processes--President Obama is allowing USCIS to adopt crazy, unrealistic, anti-business, extra-regulatory requirements for visas which have long served America well, such as the H-1B, the L-1B, the E-2, and even the EB-5 Investor Visas! USCIS is ramping up the "FDNS" or the "fraud unit," in an attempt to FIND fraud where none exists. These fraud units, which operate without the ability to prosecute actual perpetrators of fraud, appear to trying to find work to do, rather than actually addressing a real need. Meanwhile, USCIS delays adjudication of cases such as the H-1B to force employers to pay the "premium processing" fee of $1,225, which is nothing short of extortion. USCIS raises fees without raising the quality of services, or shortening the adjudicatory process. USCIS continues to delay the processing of FOIA requests and continues to withhold relevant information in direct contradiction to President Obama's first executive order on government openness.


I could go on, but why? President Obama and his administration has shown no desire to actually fix the immigration system America suffers under at this time. He has shown no leadership on the immigration issue. President Obama has not lived up to his campaign promises to immigrants, and Latinos specifically. And yet, President Obama and the Democrats keep coming back to the immigrant well asking for their support in the next election with the promise that if they get reelected they will finally "fix" the broken immigration system.


The reality is it is time for voters who want the immigration system fixed to better serve America, make legality the norm, create greater national security, and reduce illegal immigration to either hold the Democrats and President Obama directly responsible for their failures to date, or somehow get the Republicans to withdraw from their current anti-immigration position. Otherwise, Hispanic, Asian, African and other new immigrant voters may have no one to carry their views on immigration to successful legislation for many years to come.

Bingo!

Also, the President could have withheld his signature on on the tax cuts bill until the Dream Act was passed. That would have had many republicans reconsider their vote as the tax cuts bill was the republicans only goal for the lame duck session.

That's pretty much how I feel. Obama was making calls, but the bottom line is: he wasn't doing enough. We need real leadership on immigration reform. If the Republicans want an enforcement bill, then he as commander-in-chief has to do everything that is possible to ensure that a bill containing some sort of legalization/path to citizenship passes, as well. He fought tooth and nail for HCR and the immigrant community expects the same sort of commitment from him towards immigration reform.

I met Mr. Kuck before Obama's election in 2008 and he was very optimistic about immigration reform. And at that point, he even advised my family to stay in the U.S. But this is pretty much what his response was when I spoke to him again in July of this year (minus all of the DREAM Act stuff). He's one of the nicest and most honest immigration attorneys I have ever met.

You can look at it that way.. either way..
cool story bro..

the question is how do we make it known that he has failed us and the immigrant community? how do we make it obvious to everyone who doesn't know this, that obama and democrats are responsible and has gave us false hope and false promises? we somehow got to make it evident to the entire immigrat community who keep voting for this bastards....we got to put the spotlight on them so they get it they failed us and gave us false hope and promises.....

Do not go in front of the media to broadcast your displeasure regarding the lack of avenues for obtaining status when such "media" (the incompetent Spanish language media), immediately show the other side - read: Obama's administration's responsibility to "enforce the law".

Obama casts the stone, and then hides the hand.

He is the "enforcer" in-chief. He decides, as the executive, whom to grant relief from deportation. Yet, quietly, his government continues to issue deportation orders for countless of people, Dream Act beneficiaries included, while at the same time sending that ridiculous woman Cecilia Munoz to deceive the public with lies about the supposed "work" towards reform that his administration is doing.

The mistake is to allow the media to present both sides together. Separate activism from the White House's PR machine! You have a sympathetic immigrant story followed by administration automatons nodding their head in sympathy who get to tell the public that they hate to do it - but they *have* to deport people. Separate our immigrant stories from the White House's "immigration" story.

Do not allow the media or press to print them together. Putting them together allowed Obama to morph the DREAM Act from its original purpose of earned legalization *trough* education and military service, to a temporary visa/enforcement tool for the *minimum* amount of beneficiaries.

"Obama is to Blame for the Failure of Immigration Reform"

LMAO!!!

Obama is NOT the blame for the failure of the DA, instead it is those 5 Dems and the republicans

That is reality people

Obama can't force feed republicans his convictions.

He can, however, negotiate with them. He's a very bad negotiator, in my opinion. He caves in too easily.

Godamn you insolent kids. This is what makes me angry about this forum. In that case, we ALL should blame the failure on ourselves, because WE DIDN'T DO ENOUGH. Hell, We could have held marches, like back in '07, but we didn't. The president is a busy man, and he has endorsed the Dream Act at various points. There was a speech somewhere where he talked only about immigration where he also mentioned the Dream Act.

The Dream act is a small piece of legislation, a very necessary, but in effect small. Healthcare affected EVERYONE in the country. And by the way, he got the votes for everything else (Wall Street, DADT, etc..). The failure of the Dream Act is and will always be the right wing GOP conservatives, want it or not. They do what the Democrats should do, they stick together and stay united.

He doesn't cave in too easily, he just has a plan. Why are republicans so silent about the tax cut issue now? In my opinion, they are like this: "Wtf did we just do?," They basically gave Obama a path to prove how bad the Tax cuts are, and they will pay for that in 2012. In my opinion, he will bring up immigration reform on 2012, hence elections. He is going to make them either resolve immigration, or take away the latino vote. Either way, Obama has more of a chance to win.

The writer of the OP can speak with authority on the subject - he is a very respected and knowledgeable individual and one with whom I agree.

The president has the ability to direct his justice department to provide administrative relief to certain groups of individuals regardless of conflict of schedules, deadlines, Republican opposition, enemies, the weather, Michael Vick's future in sports, etc.

He delegates a lot of his authority to the heads of other agencies - cue in DHS Secretaty Napolitano - since he is the busy man that the President of the United States is expected to be. There are two ways to get legislation passed in Washington: either you drive a vote or you make a deal. Making a deal backdoors protects members of your own party (Democrats) and member of the opposing party (Republicans) from keeping fresh the memory of their positions in the minds of voters. It is easy and preferrable. Driving a vote in Congress on the other hand, will not only make you enemies, but also place vulnerable members of your party at even greater risk of losing their seats. No one likes it. The president was smart and *negotiated* behind doors deals on DADT, Start, Tax cuts, etc. Did he do this for the Dream Act? No.

The only insolence here is if he plans on stalling on immigration reform until 2012 to use the hope and desperation of the undocumented to help his own re-election. You can call the next 400,000 people picked to be kicked out of the country in 2011 insolent. I call bullshit on this administration.