Amnesty baby!!! To Obama it doesn't matter if these lawbreakers have no respect for our laws, he wants them to be given a free pass and to be allowed to stay in America instead of deporting their asses and telling them to come through the front door next time, legally.
According to the article, Obama is aware of the potential powder keg that is going to blow up in his face, but heyyyyyyyyyyy, he has a Democratically controlled House and Senate, so he should be able to ignore those millions upon millions of folks that organized and derailed the amnesty plan in 2007.
From the NYT piece: (Linked above in the first paragraph)
While acknowledging that the recession makes the political battle more difficult, President Obama plans to begin addressing the country’s immigration system this year, including looking for a path for illegal immigrants to become legal, a senior administration official said on Wednesday.
Mr. Obama will frame the new effort — likely to rouse passions on all sides of the highly divisive issue — as “policy reform that controls immigration and makes it an orderly system,” said the official, Cecilia Muñoz, deputy assistant to the president and director of intergovernmental affairs in the White House.
Mr. Obama plans to speak publicly about the issue in May, administration officials said, and over the summer he will convene working groups, including lawmakers from both parties and a range of immigration groups, to begin discussing possible legislation for as early as this fall.
[...]
Just last month, Mr. Obama openly recognized that immigration is a potential minefield.
"I know this is an emotional issue; I know it’s a controversial issue,” he told an audience at a town meeting on March 18 in Costa Mesa, Calif. “I know that the people get real riled up politically about this."
The difference between this time and the battle in 2007 over handing criminals, who came here illegally, the legal right to stay, otherwise known as AMNESTY, is that this time, unemployment is up to 8.5 percent and Americans will not want to see even more money, their tax money, spent on people that broke our laws to enter the country illegally.
Obama expects this to be a controversial issue? He hasn't seen anything yet.
In 2007, Americans stood up, called, mailed, emailed and faxed their representatives, sometimes daily, to make sure they were heard, loud and clear, despite having majorities and a President, Bush at the time, that favored Amnesty for illegal immigrants, and Obama better expect those same Americans, and even more with our economy and unemployment rate as it is, to stand up and be heard again.
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