Immigration reform taking center stage in Texas

Source: CNN

Washington (CNN) -- President Barack Obama heads to El Paso, Texas, on Tuesday to give a speech on the need for comprehensive immigration reform -- a perennial hot-button political issue that both Democrats and Republicans hope to use to their advantage in 2012.

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Conservative frustration has boiled over in recent months in form of a rash of state-level proposals to apprehend and deport illegal immigrants. Key parts of an Arizona law requiring police officers to check a person's immigration status while enforcing other statutes were recently blocked by the federal courts.

The Justice Department sued Arizona, arguing that only the federal government has the authority to dictate immigration policy.

Progressive reform advocates, meanwhile, have been frustrated by Congress's inability to pass the DREAM Act, which would offer legal standing to immigrants who entered the United States illegally as children under the age of 16 and have lived in the country for at least five years.


Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2011/POLITICS/05/09/obama.immigration/

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The corporate media will, of course, do its best to deflect reform advocate anger away from Republicans, and try to lay blame on Democrats for failing to pass immigration reform even as Republicans pass a series of racially tinged anti-immigration legislation throughout the Country. Indeed, expect corporate sock puppets to attack Democrats from the "left" the same way that "Latinos for Reform" urged Hispanics not to vote in order to punish Democats for not pushing strongly on reform. Of course, it was discovered that this group was a GOP front group.

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/05/on_the_border.html

The president’s speech will undoubtedly focus on his administration’s achievements at boosting border security, and should provide an opportunity for him to present a careful assessment of what more is needed to ensure a functional border and sound immigration policy—something the American people overwhelmingly support, according to a recent Pew Research Center poll.

These security and economic arguments need to be made in the face of cynical assaults by anti-immigrant conservatives on the administration’s record—attacks designed to stymie the serious reform efforts we need to debate for the good of our country. Despite claims to the contrary, the Obama administration now boasts a record-breaking number of agents along the border with Mexico, working with now functioning technology based on wise investment decisions designed to stem the flow of undocumented immigrants.

Indeed, their alternative—mass deportation—would cost U.S. taxpayers and our national economy hundreds of billions of dollars every year. A CAP report found that the Department of Homeland Security would have to spend $285 billion, or $23,148 per person, to arrest, detain and deport all of the unauthorized immigrants in our country, resorting to tactics that by any measure would be profoundly un-American.

In contrast, comprehensive immigration reform would be unarguably beneficial. CAP’s analysis of the economic benefits of legalizing undocumented immigrants now working here instead of their deporting them suggests a national difference of $ 2.6 trillion lost versus $1.5 trillion gained in cumulative GDP growth over 10 years. Arizona alone would see an increase of $1.68 billion in tax revenue if the state’s undocumented workers were legalized as opposed to a 10 percent loss in state income if they all had to leave the state.
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The Pew poll referred to above: