Preoccupied with healthcare and expanding government, President Obama is still working full throttle to shove through an immigration reform bill prior to the midterm elections because Latino groups have threatened to withhold votes for Democratic candidates.
To appease the influential La Raza movement, the commander-in-chief met privately with his staff this week to devise a measure that will grant United States citizenship to the country's estimated 11 million illegal immigrants, according to a major newspaper that published interesting tidbits about the secret gathering.
Among them is that the administration has planned a huge immigration rally in Washington D.C. later this month to "spotlight the issue and build needed momentum." It will be made clear however, that citizenship will not be "granted lightly" and that illegal aliens must register, pay taxes and pay a penalty for violating the law.
Visibly overwhelmed with national security, the ailing economy, sky-rocketing unemployment and other hot-button issues, Obama is dedicating resources to immigration reform because the powerful La Raza lobby is growing impatient and pressuring him to fulfill his campaign promise to legalize the undocumented.
The movement's most powerful group, the extremist Mexican National Council of La Raza, has actually launched a campaign (Let's Remind Him) with an action center that trashes the president for betraying Latinos. It posts a video of Obama as a presidential candidate promising that immigration reform would be a "top priority" in his first year as commander-in-chief and sarcastically states that "sometimes we all get so busy we forget the promises we've made."
A well-known immigration rights community organizer in Chicago claims that Obama's oblivion to the "pain wrought by our broken immigration system" could have a profound effect on the 2010 and 2012 elections. In a piece published this week in a major newspaper, the director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights warns the president that if he fails to pass immigration reform he can say "adios" to the Hispanic vote in 2012.
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