During a campaign stop in San Diego in 2008, then-candidate Barack Obama promised to make immigration reform his number one presidential priority. On Monday, at a speech to the same organization in Washington, DC President Obama is coming under fire from the Latino community.
Obama spoke at the national conference of La Raza in Washington, DC, Monday maintaining his support of immigration reform, but lacking any solid change accomplished during the first three years of his presidency.
"The democrats and your president are with you...don't get confused about that. Remember who is it that we need to move in order to actually change the laws," President Obama said to the crowd, referring to Congress.
Lilia Velasquez, a San Diego Immigration Lawyer, says she's frustrated, "The only thing that we keep hearing from President Obama is: I am with you; I am in favor of immigration reform. Let's work together. But, the reality is there's no plan; there's no strategy."
In 2008 Obama rallied the crowd at the NCLR conference in San Diego when he said: "When communities are terrorized by ICE immigration raids, when nursing mothers are torn from their babies, when children come home from school to find their parents missing, when people are detained without access to legal council, the system isn't working and we need to change it."
Now, almost exactly three years later various sides of the immigration debate are weighing in on what Obama has or has not accomplished in regards to national reform.
Former U.S Attorney and instructor at University of San Diego Peter Nunez says, "I think he realizes it's going to be harder to accomplish than he thought three years ago,"
"He's pretty much stuck with the status quo until other issues are resolved,” Nunez said. They clearly won't try to touch this in congress before the next election.”
Velasquez and Nunez stand on different sides of the debate, but both agree that addressing immigration reform is not likely to happen even if Obama is re-elected next year and gains four more years to attack the issue.
