WASHINGTON: Obama takes Arizona immigration reform off agenda...
Arizona Immigration reform has become the first of President Barack Obama's major priorities dropped from the agenda of an 2010 mid-election with Congress facing voter disillusionment.
The president noted that Democrat lawmakers may lack the "appetite" to take on immigration while many of them are up for re-election and while another big legislative issue — climate change — is already on their plate.
"I don't want us to do something just for the sake of politics that doesn't solve the Arizona problem," Obama told reporters Wednesday night 04/29/10 aboard Air Force One.
Immigration reform was an issue Obama promised Latino groups that he would take up in his first year in office. But several hard realities — a tanked economy, a crowded agenda, election-year politics and lack of political will — led to so much foot-dragging in Congress that, ultimately, Obama decided to set the Arizona issue aside.
With that move the president calculated that an immigration bill would not prove as costly to his party two years from now, when he seeks re-election than it would today, even though some immigration reformers warned that a delay could so discourage Democratic-leaning Latino voters that they would stay home from the polls in November 2010 mid-election.
WASHINGTON: Obama takes Arizona immigration reform off agenda...
ReplyDeleteArizona Immigration reform has become the first of President Barack Obama's major priorities dropped from the agenda of an 2010 mid-election with Congress facing voter disillusionment.
The president noted that Democrat lawmakers may lack the "appetite" to take on immigration while many of them are up for re-election and while another big legislative issue — climate change — is already on their plate.
"I don't want us to do something just for the sake of politics that doesn't solve the Arizona problem," Obama told reporters Wednesday night 04/29/10 aboard Air Force One.
Immigration reform was an issue Obama promised Latino groups that he would take up in his first year in office. But several hard realities — a tanked economy, a crowded agenda, election-year politics and lack of political will — led to so much foot-dragging in Congress that, ultimately, Obama decided to set the Arizona issue aside.
With that move the president calculated that an immigration bill would not prove as costly to his party two years from now, when he seeks re-election than it would today, even though some immigration reformers warned that a delay could so discourage Democratic-leaning Latino voters that they would stay home from the polls in November 2010 mid-election.