March 4: The President and CEO of the National Council of La Raza, Janet Murguía, accused President Barack Obama of being “Deporter-in-Chief”.
March 6: President Barack Obama replied by proclaiming himself “Champion-in-Chief” of a comprehensive immigration reform.
In my column —Oct 7, 2013— “Is Obama the Deporter in Chief?”, —Yes, this was before Ms. Murguía— I wrote: “Based on numbers from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Obama’s record meant 1.5 times more immigrants on average than Bush deported every month. In the end, for Fiscal Year 2012 more than 400,000 immigrants were deported —the most of any year in US history. At the time, Rep. Luis Gutiérrez (D-IL) said that some 90,000 undocumented parents of American-born children were deported each year under Obama’s eye.”
However, citing The Transactional Record Access Clearing House (TRAC), I also indicated that among the deportation cases that reach immigration courts, the number that ultimately authorize individuals to stay in the US has risen dramatically. One explanation for this could be a result of Obama’s Deferred Action Program, which allows Dreamers to avoid deportation.
Issues: What to do about the unbalance between the labor demand and visa supply? What to do about the 11 million immigrants already here? What to do about the integration of families here and abroad?
Facts: Immigration reform is good for the US and good for the Hemisphere. Immigration has touched and impacted the social and cultural fabric of the United States, Mexico, and a depressed Central American Triangle: El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. The 2013 World Bank “indicator” says that about one in ten Mexicans and more than one in six Salvadorans live in the United States. And 10 percent of people from the Central American Triangle live outside their home countries —the majority in the U.S.
Are Mexico and the Central American Triangle the true “deporters”?
Political parties:
a) The GOP is trying to hit the immigration piñata by sending a bunch of politicians to Congress with a strategy of looking the other way while blindfolded. But the rhetoric on border security and citizenship cannot hide the GOP’s hostility and lack of vision towards immigration.
b) Immigrants have become hostage of the Democratic Party’s rhetoric about reform and citizenship supported by a President who never fulfilled his promises.
Obama in his State of the Union Address, January 29, dedicated 1 minute and 19 seconds to the immigration issue. 1 minute and 19 seconds to what has been called one of most important civil rights issues of the 21st century. Those watching share the same sentiment: A broken immigration system needs to be fixed, and the attacks on vulnerable immigrant families and the mass deportations have to stop.
