Amnesty's a Year Away, and Always Will Be

By Mark Krikorian, August 14, 2009

In between Quebecois meals bathed in gravy, or meat pies, or meat pies bathed in gravy, I missed something from a story (added:see below) this week on Obama's latest signal that amnesty's not happening any time soon:

But immigrant advocacy groups have been keeping up the pressure to hold Mr. Obama to his promise to Hispanic voters – that he'd make immigration reform a top priority during his first year in office.

"If we don't see a vote in Congress sooner than later, we will see a large Latino community not showing up at polls in midterm elections…. That is something the Democratic Party needs to measure," says Francisco Lopez, executive director of CAUSA, the largest Hispanic advocacy group in the Pacific Northwest.

In other words, at least some Hispanic pressure groups are playing a long game by outlining ahead of time the story line that the shellacking Democrats are likely to face — first this November in N.J. and Va. and then next November nationwide — is due to the party's insufficient attention to Hispanic demands. In fact, many of the Hispanic groups already believe they're responsible for Obama's election in the first place, despite the fact that he would have won even if not a single Hispanic had voted.

These prospective claims of the magical power of the Hispanic vote would be hilarious, given what we're seeing at the town halls and in the polling favoring McDonnell and Christie, except that many pols and analysts really believe in its magical power, regardless of facts. In any case, be warned of news headlines over the next year and a half blaming Democrat losses on insufficiently energetic pursuit of amnesty.

http://www.cis.org/krikorian/vote


From: "The Christian Science Monitor"

Obama delays immigration reform - at great risk

The healthcare battle has helped push immigration reform into next year, when midterm elections may make the task even harder.

By Michael B. Farrell | Staff writer/ August 11, 2009 edition


Ruben R Ramirez/ The El Paso Times/ AP
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano addresses those in attendance at the 6th Annual Border Security Conference held in El Paso, Texas on the campus of the University of Texas in El Paso.


San Francisco

In announcing Monday that immigration reform would be shelved until 2010, President Obama was simply bowing to political reality, say observers.

After bruising battles over healthcare and major initiatives on financial oversight and climate change, the president may not have the political capital needed to oversee any time soon a controversial overhaul of the immigration system – something former President George W. Bush tried and failed to get through Congress twice.

“The longer the healthcare debate drags out not only does it make it harder to get healthcare passed, it makes it harder to get immigration passed,â€