President Wants To Start On Reform This Year
After the President met with Congressional leaders today, he indicated that he wants to start on comprehensive reform this year and finish things up in 2010 before the mid-term elections. Here are his remarks. Following those remarks are the comments of others.
We have members of Congress from both chambers, from parties, who have participated in the meeting and shared a range of ideas. I think the consensus is that despite our inability to get this passed over the last several years, the American people still want to see a solution in which we are tightening up our borders, or cracking down on employers who are using illegal workers in order to drive down wages — and oftentimes mistreat those workers. And we need a effective way to recognize and legalize the status of undocumented workers who are here.
Now, this is — there is not by any means consensus across the table. As you can see, we’ve got a pretty diverse spectrum of folks here. But what I’m encouraged by is that after all the overheated rhetoric and the occasional demagoguery on all sides around this issue, we’ve got a responsible set of leaders sitting around the table who want to actively get something done and not put it off until a year, two years, three years, five years from now, but to start working on this thing right now.
My administration is fully behind an effort to achieve comprehensive immigration reform. I have asked my Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Secretary Janet Napolitano, to lead up a group that is going to be working with a leadership group from both the House and the Senate to start systematically working through these issues from the congressional leaders and those with the relevant jurisdiction. What we’ve heard is through a process of regular order, they would like to work through these issues both in the House and in the Senate.
In the meantime, administratively there are a couple of things that our administration has already begun to do. The FBI has cleared much of the backlog of immigration background checks that was really holding up the legal immigration process. DHS is already in the process of cracking down on unscrupulous employers, and, in collaboration with the Department of Labor, working to protect those workers from exploitation.
The Department of Homeland Security has also been making good progress in speeding up the processing of citizenship petitions, which has been far too slow for far too long — and that, by the way, is an area of great consensus, cuts across Democratic and Republican parties, the notion that we’ve got to make our legal system of immigration much more efficient and effective and customer-friendly than it currently is.
Today I’m pleased to announce a new collaboration between my Chief Information Officer, my Chief Performance Officer, my Chief Technologies Officer and the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Office to make the agency much more efficient, much more transparent, much more user-friendly than it has been in the past.
In the next 90 days, USCIS will launch a vastly improved Web site that will, for the first time ever, allow applicants to get updates on their status of their applications via e-mail and text message and online. And anybody who’s dealt with families who are trying to deal with — navigate the immigration system, this is going to save them huge amounts of time standing in line, waiting around, making phone calls, being put on hold. It’s an example of some things that we can do administratively even as we’re working through difficult issues surrounding comprehensive immigration.
And the idea is very simple here: We’re going to leverage cutting-edge technology to reduce the unnecessary paperwork, backlogs, and the lack of transparency that’s caused so many people so much heartache.
Now, we all know that comprehensive immigration reform is difficult. We know it’s a sensitive and politically volatile issue. One of the things that was said around the table is the American people still don’t have enough confidence that Congress and any administration is going to get serious about border security, and so they’re concerned that any immigration reform simply will be a short-term legalization of undocumented workers with no long-term solution with respect to future flows of illegal immigration.
What’s also been acknowledged is that the 12 million or so undocumented workers are here — who are not paying taxes in the ways that we’d like them to be paying taxes, who are living in the shadows, that that is a group that we have to deal with in a practical, common-sense way. And I think the American people are ready for us to do so. But it’s going to require some heavy lifting, it’s going to require a victory of practicality and common sense and good policymaking over short-term politics. That’s what I’m committed to doing as President.
I want to especially commend John McCain, who’s with me today, because along with folks like Lindsey Graham, he has already paid a significant political cost for doing the right thing. I stand with him, I stand with Nydia Velázquez and others who have taken leadership on this issue. I am confident that if we enter into this with the notion that this is a nation of laws that have to be observed and this is a nation of immigrants, then we’re going to create a stronger nation for our children and our grandchildren.
So thank you all for participating. I’m looking forward to us getting busy and getting to work. All right? Thank you.
Angie Kelley: Center for American Progress: Clarity by the President that the debate will start the end of this year and will likely be completed by early next year or before the mid-term elections. Both chambers need to be full engaged. Schumer has pointers in providing how to guide the framework of the debate. Both chambers need to move on the issue at the same time if we want to realistically pass CIR.
CHRLA: Field was waiting for this moment to see leadership moving on CIR. Pressure that the field built brought us to this moment. We’re hopeful that we got our message to the White House about how important CIR is to the community. 26,000 calls into the White House. 1,000 calls to members of Congress by today. 11,000 faxes via America’s Voice.
Congressman Gutierrez: Thanks everyone, great job today. Meeting did not happen without field pressure. Hispanic Caucus called for the meeting. Moved the date from next year to this year. We need to reach out to Harry Reid in the Senate to make sure that he understand how important this issue is. Keep the field activated. Blah, blah, blah. Need big activities. Tell Obama your story so he can tell your story. We’re going to win this one!
Frank Sharry: Very important that today’s NY Times that so many are saying that it can’t happen; economy too sour; issue is divisive; he’s got too much on his plate. But today, we have commitment from the White House. Congratulations to all from all the work that’s going on!
Next steps, we need to target Congress in the next few months to get all 278 votes!
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