Obama Rallies And Punts On Immigration
I’m struggling to find a point to President Obama’s visit to El Paso. It sounded more like a stump than a policy speech, but I think most of that has to do with expectations. It was billed, in advance, as a major speech on immigration, and it was, kinda’.
It was major.
In fact, according to the Associated Press, it was the President’s first trip to the border since being elected to the White House and that automatically rates as major. And his speech was about immigration, so I guess it qualifies. But here’s what it wasn’t: it wasn’t about policy, not in the kick-start-an-initiative way. This is how the AP put it:
His speech broke no new policy ground, though, and he declined to offer a bill or call on Congress to send him one by a particular deadline — a bow to political realities on Capitol Hill. Republicans who control the House are hostile to overhaul legislation.
Obama did manage to take a few swipes at Republicans, saying they would never be satisfied with border security.
“Maybe they’ll need a moat,” he said derisively to laughter from the crowd. “Maybe they’ll want alligators in the moat.”
Funny stuff, but not a clear path for change.
I’m sure there will be many Latinos who will feel a void where there was once a promise. The President made very big, very specific promises about immigration when he was a candidate. He said he’d reform immigration in his first year in the White House, then the bottom fell out of the economy and he got slightly side-tracked.
It’s been almost three years and it looks like he’s finally got time to get around to it. He invited leaders of the Latino community to talk about a plan and then he went to El Paso. But if this speech was anything it was political and positioning. He called immigration an “economic imperative” and listed his administrations accomplishments on border security. Reuters reported:
Efforts to tighten security along the U.S.-Mexican border, including a $600 million bill signed in August to hire 1,500 border patrol agents, customs inspectors and law enforcement officials, have already had an impact, the president stressed.
What he didn’t mention is that a Government Accountability Office forecast anticipates that 51% of all Border Patrol agents in the country are set to retire by 2012 – that’s a huge problem of simultaneous attrition, recruitment and training.
And then he rallied those present.
He asked everyone within ear-shot, including those of us listening on TV or the Internet, to call congress to press for reform. It’s a steep climb and he knows he doesn’t have the votes in congress to make it happen. So maybe its a plan for his second term – that’s the only way this makes sense to me. Reuters put it in perspective;
The 50.5 million Hispanics in the United States represent 16 percent of the population and are the fastest-growing U.S. minority group. They voted for Obama by a margin of more than two-to-one in 2008, according to the Pew Hispanic Center.
Not that immigration is a litmus-issue for Latinos, because it isn’t, but it’s become a concern and it’ll be hard to get re-elected without at least mentioning it. And this is where my struggle veers toward clarity. Obama has already set-up his campaign offices in Chicago – he’s already running for re-election. After his speech he went to a couple of fund raisers and reportedly brought in $2 million for the Democratic National Committee.
There’s nothing wrong with that; running for President is an expensive proposition. But so is overhauling immigration.
A senior administration official said the cost of a broad overhaul would be $54 billion, but the revenue increase would be $66 billion by adding new taxpayers.
It’s interesting that he went to Texas, a neon red state, to make his points about immigration, and border security and the DREAM Act. It’s interesting how his PR people ramped-up the anticipation of his speech, and it’s interesting how he made a great speech but did little to move the issue forward.
In the end it was somewhere between a rally and a punt, or a little of both. And if that was his intent, he did well.
Follow Victor Landa on Twitter: @vlanda
[Photo by art_es_anna]
