Obama puts immigration in Congress' court

[ilbegone]

With a re-election campaign looming, President Barack Obama is pushing Congress to overhaul the immigration system, but lawmakers seems to have little appetite to take on the issue...

...Republicans say any effort to allow illegal immigrants to stay in the country or any effort that doesn't address the inadequacies they see in border security is doomed to fail.

Although legislation has yet to be introduced, many lawmakers agree the most likely first step toward immigration legislation is a requirement that all businesses use E-Verify. The E-Verify program lets businesses know whether employees have the necessary papers to work in the U.S. Such legislation could give Democrats political cover by addressing immigration requirements that preclude tough crackdowns on immigrants, and give Republicans an opportunity to say they provided a new enforcement tool to stop illegal immigration...


...GOP House members have pledged to introduce an E-Verify bill for employers.

Some Democrats have suggested a compromise bill incorporating elements of both DREAM and E-Verify, even as they acknowledge the prospects for such a deal are dim...


...Smith said the reintroduction of failed legislation doesn't seem like a serious effort and chided Obama for focusing on the issue again in hopes of scoring campaign points with Hispanic voters.

Winning the Hispanic vote is thought to be critical in Obama's bid for re-election. In 2008, Latinos made up more than 7 percent of voters, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, and their numbers are greater in swing states such as Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado and Florida.

The Obama administration has made a point of highlighting enforcement efforts, though they differ dramatically from those of former President George W. Bush's administration.

The current administration has shied away from the high-profile immigration raids at businesses that routinely yielded large numbers of arrests of illegal workers. Instead, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has shifted strategies, focusing instead on audits of the documents employers must maintain that show their workers are eligible to work in the United States. The audits, officials have said, put the focus on employers who knowingly hire illegal workers...

Here is Obama's game:

Rather than instructing his employees in the Executive branch of the US government to enforce all immigration law, he has stepped up deporting known criminals (and actually deporting more illegal aliens than any other administration) while obstructing enforcement of the rest of the law for the others and calling the whole mess "a broken immigrations system" as well as lying about the state of border security.

Obama's spin:

Speaking in El Paso, Obama said his administration had done what Republicans in Congress have asked by adding Border Patrol agents, intelligence analysts and unmanned aerial vehicles.

"We've gone above and beyond what was requested by the very Republicans who said they supported broader reform as long as we got serious about enforcement," Obama said from a national park not far from the violent Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez. "All the stuff they've asked for, we've done."

The full article http://www.dailynews.com/ci_18094047