Mr. Obama’s immigration promise
A New York Times editorial
President Obama’s first major speech on immigration had the eloquence and clarity we have come to expect when he engages a wrenching national debate. In declaring the welcome of strangers a core American value, in placing immigrants at the center of the nation’s success and future, Mr. Obama’s exhortation was worthy of the late Senator Edward Kennedy, whose memory he respectfully summoned on Thursday. “Anybody can help us write the next great chapter in our history,” he said, regardless of blood or birth.
Mr. Obama was just as clear on why the immigration system is failing and how to fix it. Our nation “has the right and obligation to control its borders,” he said, but sealing off that vast space with troops and fences alone is a fantasy. And no amount of security at the border does anything about the undocumented 11 million who have already crossed it. Mr. Obama called for enabling these potential Americans to “get right with the law,” and for fixing the system of legal immigration, which is too inefficient for the country’s own good.
The president took particular notice of the extremism of Arizona, where a law, to take effect on July 29, compels its police to check the papers of anyone they suspect to be an illegal immigrant. It makes a crime out of being a foreigner in the state without papers — in most cases a civil violation of federal law. This is an invitation to racial profiling, an impediment to effective policing and a usurpation of federal authority, Mr. Obama said, evoking a future where “different rules for immigration will apply in different parts of the country.”
In promising to end the chaos into which immigration has collapsed (“this administration will not just kick the can down the road,” he said), Mr. Obama has laid out an ambitious goal. He urged Congress to help him pass a bill, particularly Republicans who supported bipartisan reform under President George W. Bush but who now have a united front against reform.
But Mr. Obama’s call to action applies not just to Congress but to himself as well.
