Washington, DC—According to news reports today, President Barack Obama will send 1,200 National Guard troops to help secure and stem violence along the U.S.-Mexico border. The president will also request $500 million for additional border protection and law enforcement activities.
“While we appreciate that the president reiterated his commitment to immigration reform at a meeting with congressional Republicans, taking this step without any concurrent announcement on next steps or even a timeline for a comprehensive fix to our broken immigration system is both inadequate and deeply disappointing,” said Janet Murguía, President and CEO of NCLR (National Council of La Raza), the largest national Latino civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States. “As we have stated time and again, temporary fixes and patchwork initiatives won’t solve the problem. Congress and the administration have it within their power to do what the American people need, to solve tough problems. They need to act now.”
The government has already poured hundreds of billions of dollars into border enforcement, and the first year of the Obama administration has seen more deportations than the last year of the Bush administration.
“We are on a collision course of enforcement-only policies and, as experience shows, this will not solve the problem,” Murguía continued. “The White House must outline a clear plan of action. And Republican leadership must stop playing politics and do its part to solve the problem.”
The urgency of overhauling the nation’s immigration system—a federal responsibility—has been heightened by the recent passage of SB 1070 in Arizona, which essentially sanctions racial profiling as accepted police practice and allows individuals to sue law enforcement if they feel that the law is not being fully enforced. Dozens of other states are considering legislation similar to SB 1070. While the law seems popular in various polls—demonstrating a real and legitimate frustration, as well as the need to send a message about federal inaction—many of those same polls show even greater support for comprehensive immigration reform as a solution. Yet many Republicans remain reluctant to cosponsor or support legislation or proposals to fix the problem.
