Obama says he can’t fix immigration on his own

Pres­i­dent Barack Obama, accom­pa­nied by Edu­ca­tion Sec­re­tary Arne Dun­can, left, deliv­ers his back-to school speech at Ben­jamin Ban­neker Aca­d­e­mic High School in Wash­ing­ton, Wednes­day, Sept. 28, 2011. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

JULIE PACE

Asso­ci­ated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Fac­ing weak­en­ing sup­port among His­pan­ics, Pres­i­dent Barack Obama expressed deep frus­tra­tion Wednes­day over what he called an inac­cu­rate and dam­ag­ing per­cep­tion that he can fix the nation’s flawed immi­gra­tion sys­tem on his own.

“This notion that some­how I can just change the laws uni­lat­er­ally is just not true,” Obama said dur­ing a White House round­table tar­get­ing His­panic vot­ers, a key con­stituency for the president’s re-election campaign.

The pres­i­dent said com­pre­hen­sive immi­gra­tion reform con­tin­ues to be a “top pri­or­ity” for his admin­is­tra­tion. But he blamed Repub­li­cans in Con­gress for fail­ing to join Democ­rats in sup­port­ing leg­is­la­tion that would address the flow of for­eign­ers into the U.S. and deal with ille­gal immi­grants already in the U.S.

“Only a few years ago, as I said, you had some Repub­li­cans who were will­ing to rec­og­nize that we needed to fix our immi­gra­tion sys­tem,” Obama said, not­ing that his pre­de­ces­sor, George W. Bush, was among them. “Right now you do not have that kind of lead­er­ship com­ing from the Repub­li­can Party.”

A strong major­ity of His­pan­ics sup­ported Obama’s elec­tion in 2008. But his sup­port among His­pan­ics has declined, as it has in the broader pop­u­la­tion. A recent Gallup sur­vey found 48 per­cent of His­panic vot­ers approv­ing of Obama’s job per­for­mance, com­pared with 60 per­cent in January.

While Obama has made lit­tle progress on com­pre­hen­sive immi­gra­tion leg­is­la­tion, he has pushed Con­gress to pass the Dream Act, which would pro­vide a route to legal sta­tus for col­lege stu­dents and ser­vice mem­bers brought to the coun­try as chil­dren. The bill passed the House last year when it was con­trolled by Democ­rats but was blocked by Sen­ate Republicans.

“I think there’s been a great dis­ser­vice done to the cause of get­ting a Dream Act passed and get­ting com­pre­hen­sive immi­gra­tion passed by per­pe­trat­ing the notion that some­how by myself I can go and do these things,” Obama said. “We have to pass bills through the leg­is­la­ture and then I can sign it.”

Democ­rats view His­panic vot­ers as a vot­ing bloc in 2012 that could help deter­mine the out­come in swing states such as Florida, Col­orado and Nevada. The Demo­c­ra­tic National Com­mit­tee has aired Spanish-language ads in those states in the past week to tout the ben­e­fits of Obama’s jobs bill for small busi­ness and work­ers in the con­struc­tion indus­try, which the DNC said employs 2.77 mil­lion Hispanics.

His­pan­ics accounted for more than half of the U.S. pop­u­la­tion increase over the last decade, exceed­ing esti­mates in most states and total­ing 50 million.

The bur­geon­ing His­panic pop­u­la­tion, Obama said, means it will only be a mat­ter of time before the coun­try sees a strong Latino can­di­date for pres­i­dent or vice president.

“I am absolutely cer­tain that within my life­time we will have a Latino can­di­date for pres­i­dent who is very com­pet­i­tive and may win,” Obama said.

The pres­i­dent spent more than 30 min­utes tak­ing ques­tions sub­mit­ted online, cov­er­ing top­ics from U.S. pol­icy toward Cuba to the president’s $447 bil­lion jobs bill. Obama said the jobs leg­is­la­tion would have a par­tic­u­larly pos­i­tive impact on the His­panic com­mu­nity, which has an unem­ploy­ment rate of 11.3 per­cent, com­pared with the national unem­ploy­ment rate of 9.1 percent.

Obama also said he believed fed­eral courts would rule “fairly soon” on the Defense of Mar­riage Act, or DOMA, the law that defines mar­riage as between one man and one woman. While the White House backs repeal­ing DOMA through Con­gress, Obama said Wednes­day that he does not believe there are enough votes on Capi­tol Hill to over­turn the law.

The pres­i­dent was also pressed on the sta­tus of Puerto Rico, where a state­hood ref­er­en­dum is planned for next year. Obama said he believes the island will remain a U.S. com­mon­wealth unless there is a “solid indi­ca­tion” of sup­port for statehood.

“If it split down the mid­dle or 51–49, I think Con­gress’ incli­na­tion is going to be not to change but to main­tain sta­tus quo until there is greater indi­ca­tion there is sup­port for change,” he said.

It’s unclear whether any Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­date can sway His­panic vot­ers. Sev­eral top GOP con­tenders, includ­ing for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts Gov. Mitt Rom­ney, have taken a hard line on immi­gra­tion, call­ing for a fence and more troops along the bor­der with Mex­ico to stop the flow of ille­gal immigrants.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry has been the out­lier on immi­gra­tion in the Repub­li­can field, and he is hop­ing his mod­er­ate record will appeal to His­pan­ics. But his rivals believe Perry’s stance on immi­gra­tion could be a weak­ness with his party’s more con­ser­v­a­tive wing.

Perry insists that a phys­i­cal bor­der fence is an imprac­ti­cal way to con­trol the flow of immi­grants into the U.S. He also sup­ported a 2001 Texas law that allows the chil­dren of undoc­u­mented immi­grants to receive in-state tuition at Texas uni­ver­si­ties if they meet cer­tain requirements.

Posted by AP News on Sep 28 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.