Calling Immigration System ‘Broken,’ Obama Pushes Bill

By PETER BAKER

Published: July 1, 2010

WASHINGTON — President Obama pressed Congress on Thursday to pass comprehensive immigration legislation to fix a “fundamentally broken” system by toughening enforcement of existing laws while creating a path to citizenship for many of the 11 million people in the United States illegally.

In his first speech devoted entirely to the hotly disputed issue since taking office, Mr. Obama tried to navigate between what he called the two extremes of the immigration debate, defending his efforts to strengthen border security while rejecting the idea of mass deportations as “logistically impossible and wildly expensive.” But he said change could not wait, despite the political risks.

“In sum, the system is broken and everybody knows it,” he told an audience of lawmakers, activists, business executives and labor leaders at the American University in Washington. “Unfortunately, reform has been held hostage to political posturing, special-interest wrangling and to the pervasive sentiment in Washington that tackling such a thorny and emotional issue is inherently bad politics.”

Embracing legislation drafted by Senators Charles E. Schumer, a New York Democrat, and Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, Mr. Obama said the solution was to take a “practical, common-sense approach” and put the onus on Republicans to step up and join him. He noted that some of the Senate Republicans who voted for immigration legislation when President George W. Bush was in office have backed off, and he attributed their shift to the politics of the moment.

“I’m ready to move forward, the majority of Democrats are ready to move forward and I believe the majority of Americans are waiting to move forward,” he said. “But the fact is, without the bipartisan support that we had just a few years ago, we cannot solve this problem.”

The speech, along with high-profile meetings earlier in the week with advocates for immigrants and members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, was more about politics than legislation at least in the near term. Neither the White House nor the Democratic leadership in Congress has any expectation of trying to actually push through a law this year, given the major issues already on their plate, like financial regulation and energy.

But Mr. Obama’s public focus on the issue appeared aimed at framing the debate for the approaching midterm elections, when the Hispanic vote could be critical in several important states. The president’s attention is a favor to Senator Harry M. Reid, the Democratic majority leader, who faces a tough re-election battle in Nevada and promised to pursue immigration legislation in an appeal to his state’s growing Hispanic population.

Mr. Obama also used the opportunity to repeat his opposition to Arizona’s new law requiring law enforcement officers to question the immigration status of anyone they stop for other reasons if they suspect that they are in the country illegally, calling it “ill conceived” and “divisive.” But he did not announce the lawsuit that the Justice Department is preparing to challenge it.

“We face the prospect that different rules for immigration will apply in different parts of the country, a patchwork of different immigration rules where we all know one clear national standard is needed,” he said. “Our task then is to make our national laws actually work, to shape a system that reflects our values as a nation of laws and as a nation of immigrants.”

Mr. Schumer and Mr. Graham have proposed a plan to require Social Security cards with biometric data — like fingerprints or retinal patterns — to ensure that illegal workers cannot get jobs. They say the plan would also strengthen border security and interior enforcement, create a process for admitting temporary workers and establish a “tough but fair path to legalization” for those already here.

Under their plan, illegal immigrants would be required to admit that they broke the law and to pay fines and back taxes, pass background checks and prove that they can speak English before going to the back of the line of prospective immigrants seeking permanent legal residency and citizenship.

Republican critics said that still amounted to amnesty for millions of people who broke the law and would only encourage continued illegal migration.

“Part of the reason why we have been so successful in this country is because we live by the rule of law,” Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the second-ranking House Republican, said before the president’s speech. “We do live by its enforcement and transparency in our judiciary. And I think some of the ire right now surrounding the immigration issue is having to do with the illegal immigration and, frankly, the flouting of the law.”

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