Friday, April 26, 2024

Obama’s Push for Immigration Reform Continues

President Barack Obama made another pitch today at the White House for what he called a “common sense” immigration reform, one of the top priorities of  his second term in office .

“It doesn’t make sense to have 11 million people who are in this country illegally without any incentive to come out of the shadows, get right with the law, and move forward,” said President Obama. “It’s not smart, not fair, it doesn’t make sense.”

According to President Obama, immigration reform is good for national security, it will boost the economy, and reduce the deficit. Immigration reform attracts support from all aspect of the  the political spectrum, and he urged Congress to act on the issue in a bipartisan way. However, despite the government shut down or the threat of the first default in more than 20 years, which inflicted an unnecessary wound with real cost to real people, Democrats and Republicans still have big disagreements on immigration reform.

President Obama stressed how the current immigration system is broken and that it is up to Republicans in the House to decide if reform becomes a reality or not. According to Obama, the polls show that the clear majority of the American people think it is the right thing to do, so he urged the House to realize that it does not get any easier to put it off.

“If House Republicans have new and different ideas for how we should move forward then we want to hear them, I will be listening,” he said. “What we can’t do is sweep the problem under the rug and leave for someone else to resolve in the future. Let’s show that Washington can actually resolve problems.”

Latinovations’ coverage of Obama’s Speech on CNN live