LAS VEGAS — Declaring that America’s immigration system is broken, President Obama on Tuesday called for a process to allow millions of illegal immigrants in the country to “earn their way to citizenship,” and he warned that he would send his own bill to Congress if lawmakers deadlock on a new Senate proposal.
In his first trip outside Washington since his inauguration last week, Obama added to momentum on Capitol Hill in favor of an overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws, setting forth the principles for a top second-term priority — and perhaps the one most likely to be accomplished.
“I’m here today because the time has come for common sense, comprehensive immigration reform,” Obama told a crowd at a public high school. “Now’s the time,” he said repeatedly.
“We need Congress to act on a comprehensive approach that finally deals with the 11 million undocumented immigrants who are in this country right now,” Obama said later in the speech.
The Senate Judiciary Committee plans to hold a hearing on Feb. 13, the day after Obama’s State of the Union address, to begin considering immigration reform, according to the panel’s chairman, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.).
Speaking in a state with a population that is 27 percent Hispanic, Obama outlined the steps illegal immigrants could take to apply for citizenship. They would register, submit biometric data, pass background checks and pay fees before gaining provisional legal status. After taking those steps and learning English, the immigrants would wait in line for existing immigration backlogs to clear before being allowed to apply for permanent resident status, while immigrants must hold before they can apply for citizenship.
“So that means it won’t be a quick process, but it will be a fair process,” Obama said. “And it will lift these individuals out of the shadows and give them a chance to earn their way to a green card and eventually to citizenship.”
Obama said his principles for immigration reform also include strengthening border security and cracking down more forcefully on businesses that knowingly hire illegal workers.
“We have to make sure that every business and every worker in America is playing by the same set of rules,” he said. “We have to bring the shadow economy into the light so that everybody’s held accountable — businesses for who they hire and immigrants for getting on the right side of the law. That’s common sense. That’s why we need comprehensive immigration reform.”
He said he hopes that his proposal “provides some key markers to members of Congress as they craft a bill.”
While welcoming a newly announced Senate plan, Obama ventured beyond it in several respects. He said a framework for comprehensive immigration reform that was announced by a bipartisan group of senators Monday is “very much in line with the principles I’ve proposed and campaigned on for the last few years. At this moment, it looks like there’s a genuine desire to get this done soon. And that’s very encouraging.”
But he warned: “We can’t allow immigration reform to get bogged down in an endless debate.... And if Congress is unable to move forward in a timely fashion, I will send up a bill based on my proposal and insist that they vote on it right away.”
Obama unveils his own proposal for immigration reform
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Obama unveils his own proposal for immigration reform
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Obama unveils his own proposal for immigration reform
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