Obama denies blame on immigration reform


President Obama sought to deflect any blame for stalled immigration reform away from the White House this week, telling supporters that if it fails it will be because congressional Republicans didn't want to address the problem.

White House press secretary Jay Carney says Obama is now trying to "re-energize and reinvigorate" the debate on comprehensive immigration reform, which could include proposals to increase security along the U.S.-Mexican border and provide a path to citizenship for 11 million illegal immigrants already living in the United States.

"We're going to keep on fighting for immigration reform because we can't have a nation that forgets its immigrant roots," Obama said at a recent fundraiser. "We can have a nation that is a nation of laws but also a nation of immigrants."

Obama scored big with Hispanic voters in 2008, winning 67 percent of their votes. And while his approval ratings have since fallen to historic lows, he remains fairly popular among Hispanics.

The most recent Gallup Poll shows 54 percent of Hispanic voters approve of the job Obama is doing in office, compared with 82 percent in May of 2009.

Meanwhile, the Hispanic population is growing faster than any other group in the nation.

The demographic now makes up 16.3 percent of the U.S. population, accounting for more than 50 million people nationwide when roughly 12 million illegal immigrants are included, according to the latest Census Bureau numbers.

Latina magazine co-President Galina Espinoza says Hispanics who voted for Obama feel the president has failed them.

"There's a lot of frustration right now," Espinoza said. "This was one of his campaign promises."

The White House blames Congress for the lack of action on immigration reform and says the president supports broad changes in immigration. But unlike President Bush, he hasn't issued his own plan.

Obama points to House passage of the DREAM Act, a measure that would have granted amnesty to some illegal immigrants, as proof that he has a stake in this fight. The legislation passed the Democratic-controlled House in the lame-duck session following the 2010 midterm elections, and then failed in the Senate -- which was also controlled by Democrats.

Now that Republicans control the House, however, some say immigration reform is a pipe dream despite Obama's renewed calls.

"There is absolutely no possibility of that happening, period," said Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies. "Even when Democrats controlled both houses of Congress they couldn't pass the DREAM Act."

Krikorian said Obama is revisiting the immigration debate simply to placate Hispanic voters.

"This is purely an exercise of political theater," he said. "[Obama] is trying to sweet-talk people."

Immigration policy expert Allert Brown-Gort says Hispanics' dissatisfaction with Obama will show up in the polls on Election Day 2012.

"The fact remains that this administration not only failed to pass the DREAM Act, it also deported nearly 400,000 people last year -- roughly the size of Cleveland," said Brown-Gort, director of the University of Notre Dame's Institute for Latino Studies. "This puts in serious doubt, if not the direction of the Latino vote, the effective strength of the support."

hpeterson@washingtonexaminer.com

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