Los Angeles Times
By Hector Becerra
July 19, 2014
In
a fiery speech at the Los Angeles Convention Center on Saturday, U.S.
Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) said he was confident after meeting with
President Obama last week
that the president will move forward in the coming months with an
executive order that would grant legal status to millions of immigrants
in the country illegally, possibly including the parents of
American-born children.
Gutierrez,
speaking on the first day of the annual conference of the National
Council of La Raza, also took aim at Republicans for failing to pass
immigration reform legislation
and warned that there would be a political price to pay. He chastised
the harsh rhetoric in conservative corners against a surge of tens of
thousands of Central American youths who illegally crossed the
Southwestern border in recent months fleeing violence
in their home countries.
"We
sat down with the president of the United States and we said to him,
'Mr. President, we want you to be as generous and broad and wise as the
Republicans have been
small and mean-spirited,'" said Gutierrez, who has long been an
outspoken advocate of immigration reform on the national stage. He said
the president's response was positive.
Obama
has said before that he's convinced House Republicans will not take
action to reform immigration laws this year and vowed to use his
executive authority to "fix
as much of our immigration system as I can on my own, without
Congress." Republicans have countered that this will only make existing
border problems worse.
Last
week, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti announced the city would help
shelter immigrant children who have been detained after crossing the
border. But in other cities
and towns across the country, including in California, pitched protests
have erupted over plans to temporarily house the children.
This
month, Homeland Security buses carrying children and families had to be
re-routed to a facility in San Diego after protesters waving American
flags blocked the convoy
in the Riverside County city of Murrieta. A plan to house Central
American children in a shuttered school in Lawrenceville, Va., was
scuttled after another angry protest, and in Vassar, Mich., several
dozen demonstrators, some carrying rifles and handguns,
showed up to block plans for a similar facility there.
"We
need to ask ourselves who we are as Americans in moments like this when
we see hateful images," Garcetti said in a speech at the weekend
conference. "As parents, how
do we respond to children who we see with fear in their eyes, doing the
most elemental thing that any one of us would do: try to find their
parents?"
Though
Republicans have criticized Obama for not doing enough to stem the
surge of immigrant children, the administration has sought to hammer
home a message that those
crossing the border illegally will be sent back. Justice Department
officials have announced plans to speed up court proceedings for
unaccompanied youths and families, whose influx across the border
threatens to paralyze an already sluggish court system. During
a congressional hearing in the border city of McAllen, Texas,
Republican leaders, including Texas Gov. Rick Perry, said the best
response to the "humanitarian crisis" was to deport the Central American
children back home as quickly as possible.
"We
are a country of laws. We have to respect those laws, and if we do not
today clearly send a message that you cannot come to the United States"
illegally, Perry said,
"then this is going to get worse."
Perry
said a discussion on stalled immigration reform legislation would not
happen until the border is secured, and warned about increasing anger in
communities about
the recent surge in illegal crossings.
A
new Pew Research survey found Obama gets low ratings for his handling
of the influx: A slight majority of respondents, 53%, said the legal
process for dealing with Central
American children should be sped up, even if it meant that some who
might qualify for asylum would be deported. But 68% of people surveyed
supported a "broad revamp" of the immigration system to allow some of
the estimated 11 million people in the U.S. illegally
to obtain legal status if they met certain requirements.
Although
Latinos overwhelmingly supported Obama in 2008 and again in 2012, the
president has been sharply criticized for historically high numbers of
deportations under
his administration.
Janet
Murguia, president of the National Council of La Raza, once referred to
Obama as the "deporter in chief." But on Saturday participants said
they were heartened by
what they were hearing from the president. Gutierrez said that when he
and members of the Hispanic Congressional Caucus met with Obama, he told
the president, "You are our last hope for fairness and justice."
"The president has to act," Gutierrez said. "And I believe the president will act."
Switching
between English and Spanish, Gutierrez also warned Republicans about
the consequences of the often harsh rhetoric over the recent influx of
immigrant children.
He invoked the experience of California, which became a solidly
Democratic state after former Republican Gov. Pete Wilson successfully
pushed for Proposition 187, a 1994 voter-approved ballot measure that
would have denied health and education benefits to
those here illegally but was later overturned by the federal courts.
Wilson's move has been cited as a major reason for a surge in the number
of Latinos becoming reliably Democratic voters.
"We
need to raise our voices, make ourselves citizens, sign up to vote and
punish those who speak ill and criminalize children who come to our
border," Gutierrez said
in Spanish to rousing cheers.
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