New York Daily News
By Juan Gonzalez
October 4, 2013
Barack Obama is heading toward a horrid milestone.
In a few weeks, the number of undocumented immigrants deported since the President took office will surpass 2 million.
That’s right. Two million people thrown out of our country in less than five years. That’s more than under any other President. And the staggering number includes tens of thousands of undocumented parents separated from their U.S.-born children.
No wonder immigrant advocates and labor unions plan to stage protests in more than 150 cities Saturday, to be followed by a march in Washington on Tuesday.
They keep asking: Whatever happened to immigration reform?
Last November, an astonishing surge of Latinos at the ballot box helped assure Obama a second term. That surge convinced many Americans — even a host of prominent Republicans — that the time had come to fix our broken immigration system, to finally provide a pathway to citizenship for the roughly 11 million undocumented individuals living in the U.S.
In June, when a bipartisan majority in the Senate approved a sweeping reform bill, it seemed that sanity had finally taken hold in the immigration debate.
But as the summer dragged on, Republican House Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor bowed to Tea Party extremists and refused to bring a similar comprehensive bill to a vote in their chamber.
To make matters worse, Obama wasted valuable weeks on his fixation with attacking Syria, instead of pressing hard for the immigration reform that he claimed was a top priority.
Obama's attention has been off immigration reform in recent weeks, due to the deteriorating situation in Syria, the government shutdown and the upcoming federal debt ceiling battle.
And in the time since the Senate passed the immigration bill, the Department of Homeland Security deported another 100,000 people.
Now, given the government shutdown and the looming battle over the federal debt ceiling, prospects for immigration reform seem almost dead.
But, undaunted, hundreds of immigrant groups from around the country aren’t giving up. They are determined to force an end to Washington gridlock with a new wave of marches and civil disobedience actions over the next few weeks.
Organizing a big event in Washington is dicey right now, however. With so many workers furloughed, the National Park Service has so far declined permits for use of the National Mall.
“We are not going to allow the federal shutdown to shut down the voices of immigrant workers and their supporters,” said Hector Figueroa, president of Local 32BJ, Service Employees International Union, a key organizer of the demonstrations.
“We made a mistake early this year and demobilized,” Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Chicago), the leading advocate of immigration reform in the House, told me Thursday. “Nothing happens in Washington unless there is a consistent, persistent demand.”
House Democratic leaders introduced their own immigration bill this week, just ahead of Saturday’s events. But nothing will happen there unless Boehner allows a vote.
So, immigration activists plan to target him and Cantor for repeated protests over the next few months to pressure them to do so.
The same activists, however, aren’t letting Obama off the hook.
“Expect some pretty dramatic civil disobedience to mark that 2 millionth deportation,” one movement strategist told me.
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