Biden creates furor, underscoring bitterness over Obama immigration policy
Will Latina/o voters turnout in large numbers for the Biden/Harris ticket in Election 2020? There are some rumblings on the issue from, among others, Julian Castro, the only Latino who vied for the Democratic nomination. In addition, the former Vice President appears to be in a dead heat for Latina/o support in Florida, a key swing state.
Rafael Bernal for The Hill reports that Biden may not be making things better:
“Immigration advocates are livid over the Biden transition team’s addition of Cecilia Muñoz, a former Obama administration official who was the public face of that administration’s immigration policy.
Muñoz, who once served as the head of former President Obama’s White House Domestic Policy Council, was named by the Biden campaign . . . as part of a group of eight new senior transition advisers.
The pick was quickly criticized by immigration reform advocates, a reaction that exhibited both ideological divides within the Democratic Party and a lingering resentment felt by many immigration advocates over the actions of the Obama administration, particularly in its first term.”
Immigration, of course, is an important policy issue to many Latina/o voters.
During the President’s first term, the Obama administration deported approximately 400,000 annually, leading to the reference to the President as the “deporter-in-chief.” The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy came in 2012 and provided limited relief to young undocumented people.
Munoz defended many of the Obama administration’s immigration actions.
Here is a Presente.org video with the following explanation of a petition:
“White House advisor Cecilia Munoz is falsely claiming that President Obama cannot stop the deportations decimating immigrant communities — even though we all know that President Obama has the power to stem the flood of deportations his Administration has unleashed on immigrant communities. Once an advocate for Latino communities at National Council of La Raza, Munoz is now trading on her credibility in Latino communities and access to Latino media to disingenuously take pressure off the Obama Administration to act. Petition: http://act.presente.org/sign/munoz2014″
KJ