Obama might be giving himself problems with immigration stance - Ruben Navarrete

SAN DIEGO — President Obama recently gave a commencement address but some in his audience were intent on giving him a lesson.

Obama was speaking at Barnard College in New York — one of the country’s most respected women’s colleges — to highlight one of the more far-fetched drumbeats of his re-election campaign: that the GOP is waging a “war on women.”

But Obama got a taste of his own medicine thanks to a silent protest staged by more than 60 students, faculty members, and families of students who have figured out that this administration is at war with the immigrant community. The protesters poked at Obama by wearing campaign-style buttons that read — in reference to his 2008 slogan: “Yes You Can! Stop Deportations.”

He sure can. Immigration reform advocates wasted more than a year arguing with Obama over whether he had the authority to stop deportations of illegal immigrants — or at least determine the order of who gets removed so that students and people with U.S.-born children would go to the back of the line.

Well, of course he has this authority. Presidents have tons of executive power. In fact, Obama has splurged on it. He has used executive power to direct the Justice Department to stop defending the Defense of Marriage Act, which allows states to not recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states; create more environmental regulations to curb greenhouse gas emissions; grant state waivers from federal education mandates intended to increase accountability and raise academic standards; loosen the terms for borrowers to pay back student loans; and bypass the Senate confirmation process to install officials using recess appointments.

So when the president was claiming he didn’t have the power to stop deportations, maybe what he really meant was that he was terrified to do anything about the practice because he knew that he would be portrayed by opponents as weak on combating illegal immigration.

Here you have a president whose administration has deported more than 1.2 million people in three years. The overwhelming majority of those sent home — more than 80 percent — were Latino, and that means perhaps hundreds of thousands of Latino families were divided. Latinos didn’t take kindly to that since they value nothing more than family.

According to a recent survey by the Pew Hispanic Center, nearly 60 percent of Latinos disapprove of Obama’s deportation policies. And why do they disapprove of removing people who shouldn’t be in this country anyway? It’s because of the three D’s: degree, discretion and dishonesty.

Degree: Forcible removal is only one tool in the government’s toolbox. And it should be used sparingly because it can divide families and remove breadwinners from the home. The administration is using deportations aggressively — and even bragging about how many people it removes each year.

Discretion: A vital tenet of the American justice system is discretion for police, prosecutors and judges. Circumstances must be taken into account, and leniency applied in some cases. The administration has eliminated discretion by refusing to allow cities and states to opt out of Secure Communities, which requires localities to submit to federal officials the fingerprints of those suspected of being in the country illegally.

Dishonesty: Obama administration officials claimed that most of those deported were guilty of crimes and that they weren’t deporting students who may have been eligible for relief under the DREAM Act, which would have given legal status in exchange for attending college or joining the military. Both statements have been proved untrue.

Amazingly, Latinos still prefer Obama to presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney. But that support is a mile wide and an inch deep. And the main reason is Obama’s deportation policies, and that his advisers never told him the No. 1 rule for staying in the good graces of Latinos: Don’t mess with the family.

Obama did. And he could be paying for it with a Latino electorate that seems ambivalent about his re-election.

The choice for Latino voters is dreadful: They can vote for a Republican who promises to drop the hammer on illegal immigrants, or they can vote for a Democrat who already has.

Ruben Navarrette Jr. writes for the Washington Post Writers Group, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, DC 20071. Send email to [email protected].

Why can nobody else in America see that this is the case?

Every time I get reminded of this reality, it makes me hate Obama more for being such a liar.

By the bye, this should be the standard modus operandi any time Obama gets up to lie about his policies in a public speech: sixty or more people show up wearing shirts that say, “Yes You Can! Stop Deportations.” Or maybe, "Yes You Can! Stop lying on immigration."

If anybody on this forum took part in that protest, I commend you.