WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama promised a
Hispanic group Monday that he would continue to push for a sweeping
immigration overhaul even as he acknowledged frustration that he’s
failed to deliver on his promises.
Speaking before the National Council of La Raza,
Obama noted that he’d pledged during his 2008 campaign to “work
tirelessly to fix our broken immigration system and make the DREAM Act a
reality” so that the undocumented children of illegal immigrants could
stay in the U.S. and study.
But he blamed Republicans and the Washington
political climate — where “compromise is becoming a dirty word” — for
blocking the legislation last December.
“Feel free to keep the heat on me and keep the heat
on Democrats, but here’s the only thing you should know: The Democrats
and your president are with you,” he said. “Don’t get confused about
that. Remember who it is that we need to move in order to actually
change the laws.”
The speech came as Republicans see an opening to
court Hispanics, who represent the fastest-growing sector of the U.S.
electorate. An independent Republican group run by Karl Rove began
running Spanish-language ads last week in Hispanic markets that bash
Obama for the anemic economy.
La Raza President Janet Murguia said she was
“extremely disappointed” that none of the four GOP presidential hopefuls
her group had asked to address the council accepted the invitation.
“To me that sends a signal that we are not a priority,” she said after Obama’s speech.
Still, she and conference attendees acknowledged
frustration with the administration, which is deporting a record number
of illegal immigrants.
“It’s a growing dilemma for many in the Latino
community and many Latino voters,” she said. “They’re not satisfied that
the president has kept his promise, and we’re certainly not satisfied
with the actions we’ve been seeing by the Republicans.”
Obama asked for help in pushing immigration
revisions, but he rejected calls from some immigration groups that he
stop some deportations by going around Congress and issuing an executive
order.
“I swore an oath to uphold the laws on the books,” he
told the lunch crowd at the Marriott Wardman Park hotel. “I know very
well the real pain and heartbreak that deportations cause. … I promise
you, we are responding to your concerns and working every day to make
sure we are enforcing flawed laws in the most humane and best possible
way.”
Attendees — who included a group of student activists
called “the Dreamers,” because they’d be eligible for the DREAM Act if
it were law — weren’t mollified. They chanted a modified version of
Obama’s campaign slogan — “Yes, you can” — as he said that some groups
want him to “change the laws on my own.”
“Believe me, the idea of doing things on my own is
very tempting, and not just on immigration reform,” he said, a reference
to the weeks he’s spent tangling with Congress over raising the
nation’s debt ceiling. “But that’s not how our system works. I need a
dance partner here and the floor is empty.”
He charged that Republicans who once backed the DREAM Act had “walked away.”
The words failed to move Jose Torres, 23, who
volunteered on Obama’s 2008 campaign but says the administration and
Democrats haven’t done enough to help DREAM Act-eligible students stay
in the country. He noted that the measure came up five votes short in
the Senate — and that five Democrats had voted against it.
“There’s a lot of disappointed young people,” said
Torres, who lives in Durham, N.C., and can recite from memory nearly a
half-dozen teenagers who face deportation. “We don’t need to hear
promises of change, because we’ve heard it before.”
Sisters Teresa Ramirez, 55, and Mary Blanco, 60, of
Phoenix said they thought that most Hispanics would vote with their
pocketbooks. They gave Obama generally good grades for his stewardship
of the economy, even though Ramirez is an independent voter who went
with Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain of Arizona in
2008.
“I think he’s doing his best,” Ramirez said of the
president. “I don’t think anyone realized the depth of the problems, and
he didn’t create it, he walked into it.”
The jobless rate for Hispanics is higher than the
national average, and Obama reiterated his belief that sweeping
immigration restructuring would benefit the economy. He noted that he
called two months ago for an immigration overhaul that “holds true to
our values and our heritage. And meets our economic and security needs.
And I argued this wasn’t just the moral thing to do, it was an economic
imperative. “
He said that immigrants had founded one in four
high-tech startups in America in recent years, and that one in six new
small-business owners were immigrants.
“This country has always been made stronger by our immigrants,” the president said.
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