Advocates for illegal immigrants fear the White House is doing the bare minimum to appease Latino voters before midterm elections as it focuses on other issues.
A White House commitment to overhaul the nation's immigration system this year is collapsing, with the Obama administration undecided about the best way to proceed on an issue the president had identified as a top priority.Immigration advocates who meet regularly with White House officials said the Obama administration had been considering several approaches, including convening a summit meeting devoted to the issue and putting forward its own bill.
Those who attended a session Friday with administration officials said they came away with no indication the White House had settled on a course of action.President Obama "made some commitments that he's supposed to be delivering on," said Angela Kelley, vice president for immigration policy at the Center for American Progress, a think tank with close ties to the Obama White House. "And that was over a month ago.
So everybody can look at the calendar and make a pretty educated guess about how many days we have to get immigration done."Immigration advocates fear the White House is doing the bare minimum needed to appease Latino voters before the midterm elections in November, while concentrating its efforts on issues it considers more urgent.The White House said Tuesday that it still wanted to pass a bill this year and was trying to round up cosponsors. Flying home from a trip to Los Angeles, Obama telephoned Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) from Air Force One and asked him to consider supporting an immigration bill, according to a Brown aide. But the conversation wasn't fruitful.
Brown told Obama that he would review any legislation that comes up, but that he believes "that the immediate
focus should be on fixing the economy and creating jobs," the senator's aide said.For immigration to pass in the narrow window left before campaign season fully kicks in, Obama needs to step up his involvement, members of Congress and immigration advocates said."The critical ingredient for whether we get immigration reform done this
year will be whether the president has the courage to step forward and lead," said Deepak Bhargava, executive director of the Center for Community Change, an advocacy group for low-income people and minority groups. "That is the indispensible ingredient". READ FULL STORY
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