Obama Wants Immigration Reform This Year

President Obama took the first big step last June 25 towards fixing our broken immigration system when he met at the White House with about 30 key members of both Houses of Congress and from both parties to lay the political groundwork for comprehensive immigration legislation.

The meeting focused on contentious issues such as the legalization of undocumented aliens, border control and crackdown on employers that use illegal workers to drive down wages.

Noteworthy was the presence of Senator John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate last year, who, the President said, “had already paid a significant political cost for doing the right thing” on immigration.

After the meeting, the President said that he was encouraged by the dialogue of “responsible leaders sitting around the table who want to actively get something done and not put it off until a year, two years, three years, five years from now, but to start working on this thing right now.”

Emphasizing that his administration was fully behind the move to achieve comprehensive immigration reform, he announced that he had asked the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano to lead a group composed of leaders from the House and the Senate to work through the critical issues.

The President also disclosed that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had cleared much of the backlog of background checks that was holding up the immigration process and that the DHS is in the process of cracking down on unscrupulous employers and protecting workers from exploitation.

His administration has also speeded up the processing of citizenship applications which had been too slow in the past. And to make the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) much more efficient, more transparent and more user-friendly, he announced a new collaboration between his Chief Inspection Officer, Chief Performance Officer, Chief Technologies Offices and the USCIS.

In the next 90 days, the President promised that the USCIS will launch a vastly improved website to allow applicants to get updates on the status of their applications through email, text message and online.

With a popular President leading the way at this early stage of his administration, there is reason to be optimistic this time about the passage of immigration reform legislation. Opinion polls show an overwhelming support for fixing the system and this includes a path to citizenship for the 12 million undocumented aliens.

Since the House is led and controlled by the Democrats, it may finally come up with enough votes. In the Senate, both the majority leader Harry Reid and the Immigration Subcommittee Chairperson Charles Schumer have said that there are enough votes to pass a comprehensive bill this year.