The Status Quo on Immigration Puts Both Parties in a Bind

TIME: Last week, President Obama dashed out West to court donors in Silicon Valley and Hollywood. Surely, he couldn’t help but notice the throng of protesters outside the $2,500-a-plate dinner at Sony Pictures’ Culver City, Calif., studios carrying signs that read, “Stop Deporting Dreams.” Against the backdrop of monumental demographic shifts, the protesters’ presence confronts the President, and both political parties, with a key question: How much longer will the immigration debate be viewed as an easily dismissed problem rather than an opportunity to be seized? Since Obama’s arrival at the White House in 2009, nearly 1 million illegal immigrants have been deported –- almost as many as in George W. Bush’s entire second term. In wake of 9/11, the federal government built a massive, $17 billion apparatus to identify and expel illegal resident criminals, and the number of deportations soared from 117,000 in 2001 to nearly 400,000 last year. But only 196,000 of those deported in 2010 were individuals convicted of crimes in their home countries or the U.S. Much of the balance of those deported were relatives of American citizens born in this country.