Obama: I Didn't Promise to Complete Immigration Reform in my First Term
 

President Barack Obama said Thursday in an exclusive interview with Agencia Efe, Spain's international news agency, that he had not promised to complete his entire 2008 campaign agenda, including immigration reform, during his first term but rather had said that he would begin working on it.

When asked if he regretted not having been able to deliver on immigration reform, the president responded: "No, because what a president does, or what a candidate for president does is you lay out an agenda of where you want to take your country, a vision for how we would strengthen the country and, in my case, my vision has always been how do we create a strong middle class, ladders of opportunity into the middle class."

"And the agenda that I put forward," he said, "is one that is designed to make sure that anybody who works hard in this country can make it."

Success can be achieved by people in the United States "regardless of race, religion, background," and they can "have access to a good education, ... they can get the skills they need, ... they can find a job that pays the bills, they can own a home, send their kids to college," he said.

During the interview, which the president granted after holding a campaign rally in Golden, Colorado, he also said that "if you look at the promises that I made back in 2008, we have achieved many of them."

"(We) ended the war in Iraq, saved an auto industry on the brink of extinction, passed comprehensive health care reform which will provide millions ... more people (with) access to health insurance, including nine million Latinos who work so hard and have difficulty getting health insurance on the job, reforming our student loans program so that millions ... more young people are able to get the support that they need."

He acknowledged that "there are some things, like comprehensive immigration reform, that we have not got done yet. But in 2008 I didn't promise that I would have everything completed by the end of the first term. I said that we would begin work on all these things."

The president also expressed confidence that the agenda that he has presented recently, with the aim of being reelected in November, includes objectives "that we can accomplish."

In 2008 then Senator Obama said he would make immigration reform a "top priority" of his first term as President promising to do it his first year of his first term.

"We can't wait 20 years from now to do it, we can't 10 years from now to do it, we need to do it by the end of my first term as president of the United States of America," Obama said in 2008.

Obama made a similar promise to try for immigration reform in the first year of his second term in an interview with Univision. Obama blamed Republicans for the lack of progress on reform legislation in his first term and pledged he would “try” to bring up the issue in the first year of a second term.

Among those realizable goals, Mr. Obama said, are: "bringing ... manufacturing jobs back home, making college more affordable, continu(ing) to reform our schools, rehiring teachers so that we don't have overcrowded classrooms, continuing to develop clean energy that reduces our dependence on foreign oil, ending the war in Afghanistan, these are all things that we can accomplish."

"It's in stark contrast to the agenda that's being presented by the other side," the president said, alluding to the campaign platform of his Republican rival, Mitt Romney.

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Re: Obama: I Didn't Promise to Complete Immigration Reform in my First Term
 

He did start working on it so that is good.

Re: Obama: I Didn't Promise to Complete Immigration Reform in my First Term
 

did he start working on it?
am i the only who thought that he just verbally mentioned "immigration reform"?

Re: Obama: I Didn't Promise to Complete Immigration Reform in my First Term
 

I believe he's content with deferred action for the time being lol

Re: Obama: I Didn't Promise to Complete Immigration Reform in my First Term
 

True. He did promise to complete it within the first 100 days.

Re: Obama: I Didn't Promise to Complete Immigration Reform in my First Term
 

Great.... thought he was on our side...just another political liar, eh?

Re: Obama: I Didn't Promise to Complete Immigration Reform in my First Term
 

This article is misleading, since nowhere does it state that he didn't promise to do so. More or less if you read the non-bolded statements, he says that he will get around to them in his second term which is more realistic than trying to do it in the first term since the economy took a giant hit when get first got in office.

Re: Obama: I Didn't Promise to Complete Immigration Reform in my First Term
 

The point that Obama wanted to make was he needs "more time" to actually complete most of these things including immigration reform, meaning that people need to vote for him in order for him to complete these promises.

Re: Obama: I Didn't Promise to Complete Immigration Reform in my First Term
 

This time around he didn't even mention Immigration reform or the Dream act in his DNC speech. Uh-oh.

What is he going to say if he wins the election? That he didn't even mention it?

Yeah it's great that we got Deferred Action, what sucks is that he only did it to win back the Latino vote after he had lost them by deporting 400K illegal immigrants in 2011 alone! If he really wanted to help us, he could have ordered Deferred Action since the beginning of his term, then, work on passing the Dream act. Not the other way around.

It would have probably been even easier to pass the Dream act if we were all already here lawfully instead of trying to pass the Dream act while we were illegal immigrants, but of course that was never his concern. We were left hanging for 4 years.

That to me is like a child going back on their word and saying "Nu-uh! I didn't say I promise"

What an ass.....

Re: Obama: I Didn't Promise to Complete Immigration Reform in my First Term
 

Well, he kind of started working on it already with deferred action. Hopefully Dreamers doing great things now will show that we deserve it and show that we are assets to society by working, paying taxes and going to school should serve as a good argument.

By the way, your first statement doesnt make that much sense since DACA does NOT grant lawful status.