USImmigrationDebate.com

By PETER BAKER
Published: July 1, 2010

President Obama spoke about immigration reform at American University in Washington on Thursday.

WASHINGTON — President Obama pressed Congress on Thursday to pass comprehensive immigration legislation to fix a “fundamentally broken” system by toughening enforcement of existing laws while creating a path to citizenship for many of the 11 million people in the United States illegally.

In his first speech devoted entirely to the hotly disputed issue since taking office, Mr. Obama tried to navigate between what he called the two extremes of the immigration debate, defending his efforts to strengthen border security while rejecting the idea of mass deportations as “logistically impossible and wildly expensive.” But he said change could not wait, despite the political risks.

“In sum, the system is broken and everybody knows it,” he told an audience of lawmakers, activists, business executives and labor leaders at the American University in Washington. “Unfortunately, reform has been held hostage to political posturing, special-interest wrangling and to the pervasive sentiment in Washington that tackling such a thorny and emotional issue is inherently bad politics.”

Embracing legislation drafted by Senators Charles E. Schumer, a New York Democrat, and Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, Mr. Obama said the solution was to take a “practical, common-sense approach” and put the onus on Republicans to step up and join him. He noted that some of the Senate Republicans who voted for immigration legislation when President George W. Bush was in office have backed off, and he attributed their shift to the politics of the moment.

“I’m ready to move forward, the majority of Democrats are ready to move forward and I believe the majority of Americans are waiting to move forward,” he said. “But the fact is, without the bipartisan support that we had just a few years ago, we cannot solve this problem.”

Several Republican lawmakers fired back, arguing that the real problem is an administration that does not do enough to enforce laws already on the books. Moreover, they said, with 10 percent unemployment, this is the wrong time to be loosening the laws on illegal workers.

“We could cut unemployment in half simply by reclaiming the jobs taken by illegal workers,” said Representative Lamar Smith of Texas, co-chairman of the Reclaim American Jobs Caucus. “President Obama is on the wrong side of the American people on immigration. The president should support policies that help citizens and legal immigrants find the jobs they need and deserve rather than fail to enforce immigration laws.”

The president’s speech, along with high-profile meetings earlier in the week with advocates for immigrants and members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, was more about politics than legislation at least in the near term. Neither the White House nor the Democratic leadership in Congress has any expectation of trying to actually push through a law this year, given the major issues already on their plate, like financial regulation and energy.