President Obama deceiving Hispanics on immigration?

For a long while, President Obama has been taking a fair amount of heat on immigration.  Some of it even comes from what some might call his “base.”  Andres Oppenheimer in the Miami Herald writes that

“There is nothing astonishing about the fact that President Barack Obama’s Republican critics claim that he is taking U.S. Hispanics for a ride on immigration issues. What’s surprising is that some of Obama’s closest Democratic allies are beginning to say the same thing.

Virtually all Hispanic Democrats in the U.S. Congress — they include the only Hispanic Democratic Senator, Bob Menendez, D-New Jersey — are stepping up their criticism of Obama for not doing more on the immigration front.”

This op/ed comes on the heels of a New York Times editorial listing concrete steps that the Obama administration itself could — and should — take on immigration, with or without Congressional action.  They include:

1.  Pulling the plug on Secure Communities, a program that has sown much controversy and has resulted in mass deportations of non-violent criminal offenders;

2.  Resisting efforts in Congress to make E-Verify, a database with an error rate that disqualifies too many legal workers, mandatory on all employers;

3. Aggressivively opposing the tidal wave of state and local immigration laws, including the draconian bill passed by the Alabama legislature last week;

4.  Exercising prosecutorial discretion and not seek to remove undocumented college students or immigrants who pursue their rights in the workplace;

5.  Easing the obstacles to family reunification for undocumented immigrants who have immediate familiy in the United States; and

6.  Bolstering the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division to protect the civil rights of immigrants and U.S. citizens in these turbulent times and increasing the resources in the federal government to ensure the adequate protection of the rights of all — including immigrant — workers.

Rather than seek to offer much in terms of benefits to immigrants and their families, the Obama administration has pursued an aggressive enforcement-oriented campaign — characterized on this blog as “enforcement now, enforcement forever” — that, in fiscal year 2010, resulted in nearly 400,000 removals, more than any other administration in U.S. history.  The political calculus has been that an enforcement-oriented strategy might help move Congress to act on comprhensive immigration reform.  That has not happened, of course.

One might hope that, as the President seekes re-election, the administration might move forward on the kinds of immigrant-focused strategies like those identified by the N.Y. Times.  This is preferable to the seemingly endless wait for Congress to act on reform.

KJ