Immigrant rights activists said Friday that a White House meeting this week to reaffirm support for immigration reform -- featuring a surprise appearance by President Obama -- had helped mollify growing frustration over what some perceived as backpedaling on reform promises.
But many said that action will be needed to keep the faith among immigrants and their supporters, particularly Latinos who turned out in record numbers to help elect Obama last year.
"We've heard all of the beautiful oratory about immigration reform, but we have yet to see concrete actions to stop the suffering," said Angelica Salas, director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles. READ FULL STORYRead more…
There was that horrible earthquake that devastated Haiti. Last night, Massachusetts and the United States experienced a political earthquake that could be as in many ways as profound with the election of Republican Scott Brown over Democrat Martha Coakley to the U.S. Senate. And today is the first anniversary of the inauguration of President Barack Obama, which means that the Massachusetts debacle will be magnified by media assessments of the President's first year.
The immediate debate in Washington, D.C., among Democrats is how to tactically address the fate of the health insurance reform bill now that the filibuster-proof Senate is gone. Some want to push it through quickly before Scott Brown is seated, others want to wait, and some think the bill is dead. Word is that the White House prefers passing the Senate version of the health bill, which is the weaker of the two versions, but which they see as politically the most viable. The Republicans for the most part seem interested in killing the bill.
But whatever happens, two things seem clear. First, the Democratic Party and the president are now in the most defensive position they have been so far during this administration. Second, the Latino community is going to get screwed on health care . . . and immigration reform.
Both the House and Senate versions of the health insurance reform bills were highly flawed, raising serious questions that their description as "reform" applies. In both versions Latinos are disproportionately handicapped in our access to affordable health care, but more so in the Senate version. Part of the rumored White House strategy of supporting passage of the Senate version is that the president will fix it in the future. But this was a promise that then President Bill Clinton made in 1996 and broke about his welfare reform bill that created so many problems for Latino immigrants, including creating the five-year waiting period for legal permanent residents eligibility for federal health care programs that is such a problem today, despite being taxpayers. READ FULL STORYRead more…
The health care needs of an estimated 6.8 million undocumented and uninsured immigrants "has become the third rail in the debate over health-care reform," The Chicago Tribune reports. Some health care advocates have proposed broadening the proposals before Congress to include this population, but "fierce opposition has kept the idea off the table."
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has "emphasized that illegal immigrants would not be covered under the current proposals." And the Congressional Hispanic Caucus has called for coverage "only for 'legal, law-abiding' immigrants who pay their 'fair share' for health care." READ FULL STORYRead more…
Locked in a healthcare debate that is claiming much of his energy, President Obama acknowledged that a push to overhaul the nation's immigration system will have to wait until 2010 and even then will prove a major political test.
Obama suggested it would be too ambitious to aim for passage of new immigration laws before the end of the year, at a time when he will be confronting "a pretty big stack of bills." READ FULL STORYRead more…
A day after President Obama announced that legislation to overhaul immigration laws would have to wait until next year, the secretary of homeland security played down the need for change in a speech here and took a tough stance on enforcing current immigration laws.
The secretary, Janet Napolitano, defended the administration’s assertive strategy against illegal immigrants and companies that employ them, relying largely on programs started under President George W. Bush.
That strategy has drawn fire from immigrant groups and many of Mr. Obama’s Hispanic supporters, who say the president has not lived up to campaign promises to ease the pressure on illegal workers and to seek changes in immigration laws that would give more workers visas. READ FULL STORYRead more…
