President Obama: Help Latino Voters Help You

President Barack Obama spoke to the National Council of La Raza conference today and touched on several things, among them were reasons why his administration has been unable to bring true immigration reform, why he’s been unable to stop his record deportations and asking the Latinos present at the conference for their continued support.

To this I would say on this: President Obama, you have to help us help you in 2012.

News Taco readers and commenters have repeated two messages a lot recently. One is that Obama has failed miserably, given the failure to pass the DREAM Act (remember those five Democratic senators who voted against it?), and record deportations under his watch. Forget Obama, our commenters say, he is not on our side. A second message we get is that, it would be foolish to vote for the Republicans (all nine candidates were invited to speak but didn’t attend), who seem to be anti-Latino, so what are you going to do? It comes down to selecting the lesser of two evils.

But, I think we can do better.

President Obama said his hands were tied on immigration, that he tried to pass the DREAM Act but Republicans shut him down, that he simply was trying to uphold the law. But we all know this is not necessarily the case. Democrats failed to pass the DREAM Act, too. The Obama Administration is responsible for record numbers of deportations, and not just of criminals, either. Apparently, while he was telling the audience that he couldn’t change it, others were chanting that he could and DREAM Act protesters were present as well.

What I’ve heard our readers and commenters say is that they want President Obama to be their candidate, that they believe he can do it, they’re just waiting for it to happen. I commend the President for reaching out to Latinos, being on the third sitting president to address NCLR, to engage in creative politicking by issuing a memo not to deport DREAMers, to actually be able to speak Spanish rather well when he uses it, for visiting Puerto Rico, and for appearing so genuine in his address.

Actually, when he said, “Hermanos y hermanas, that promise is in our hands” in reference to immigration reform, I wanted to believe him. I know lots of our readers also wanted to believe him. Hopefully in the upcoming campaign season there’ll be plenty more reasons for Latino voters looking for signs from the president to believe to do so.

Follow Sara Inés Calderón on Twitter @SaraChicaD