President Barack Obama has already announced he will run for another term, as expected.
With no Republican candidate emerging as a strong contender, Obama may well have to guard himself from the critics on his side of the party divide. Prominent among them is Illinois congressman Luis Gutierrez.
Gutierrez denounced the President’s immigration stand in Miami last week, which was part of a multi-city tour to attract attention to those families whose members are being deported.
Despite a sense of relief in immigrant communities when Obama was elected president, numbers negate that sense of optimism. Under Obama’s administration, the country has seen the maximum number of deportations ever.
In his first year as president, nearly 400,000 people were deported, a figure higher than even those achieved by the Bush administration.
While the current administration cut back on in-your-face enforcement measures such as on-site roundups which were popular under the previous president, there has been no letup on other fronts. Activists allege many non-criminal illegal immigrants are being deported by Obama.
Earlier this year the Illinois Council of Immigrant and Refugee Rights released a report that showed a majority of people being rounded up by the Secure Communities Act were non-criminals.
Obama finds himself in a unique position, with people on both sides of the immigration debate miffed with the president.
Those against immigration accuse him of not having done enough while pro-immigration activists feel a sense of betrayal as they look at government numbers.
Gutierrez believes the president has been “inconsistent” on the issue.Recently Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano offered fodder for attack to her detractors as she said that students who met the criteria in the DREAM Act, will not be a “priority” for her department even though the legislation failed last year.
The problem with someone like Napolitano offering such a statement is it sends out a terribly mixed signal and that is why there is an urgent need for the Obama administration to crystallize its immigration policy before it becomes an issue of great embarrassment come 2012.
