White House to Begin Push on Immigration Overhaul in 2010
New York Times ^ | November 13, 2009 | Julia Preston
Posted on Friday, November 13, 2009 12:30:27 PM by reaganaut1
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The Obama administration will insist on measures to give legal status to an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in legislation to overhaul the immigration system that it will begin to push early next year, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said on Friday.
In an address at the Center for American Progress, a liberal policy group in Washington, Ms. Napolitano sought to dispel any notion that the administration — with health care, energy and other major issues crowding its agenda — might postpone the most contentious piece of an immigration overhaul until after midterm elections next November.
Laying out the administration’s bottom line, she said it will argue for a “three-legged stool” that includes tougher enforcement laws against illegal immigrants and the people who hire them and streamlining the system for legal immigration, but also what she called a “tough and fair pathway to earned legal status.”
With unemployment surging over 10 percent and Congress wrestling with health care, advocates on all sides of the immigration debate had started to doubt that President Obama would keep to his pledge to take on the divisive issue of illegal immigration in the first months of 2010.
Congress should be ready to move forward on immigration, Ms. Napolitano said, because the administration had made a “fundamental change” in security at the border and in cracking down on employers hiring illegal immigrants. She said the Border Patrol had increased its forces by more than 20,000 officers and more than 600 miles of border fence were completed, both milestones set by Congress.
“Let me emphasize this,” she said. “We will never have fully effective law enforcement or national security as long as so many millions remain in the shadows.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
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Bring it on scumbag. 2010 is going to make 1994 look like a warmup.
