After over two weeks of the U.S. government in partial shutdown, the United States is on the brink of extreme financial crisis if Congress cannot come to an agreement and fully reopen U.S. federal services by October 17. Just a day before the Treasury Department will run out of emergency funds, it looks like the Senate has come up with a plan that will be voted on this evening. House Speaker John Boehner says that he will not block this proposal from coming to a vote in the House of Representatives, which is a hopeful sign that the proposal will succeed and government services (including certain types of immigration services) will be restored to their normal functions before the week ends.
During an interview with Univision this week, President Obama took time to rekindle the topic of immigration reform, stating “Once [the fiscal crisis] is done, you know, the day after I’m going to be pushing to say, call a vote on immigration reform. I’m going to do so because I think it’s really important for the country.”
Obama has taken an increasing amount of heat from immigration reform activists for his hard line stance on deportations, which have doubled over the last ten years. During his administration, an average of 400,000 immigrants have been deported each year. In addition to deportations, another hot topic has been the widespread increase of holding immigrants in for-profit detention centers. Many of these issues could be addressed with a commonsense, comprehensive immigration reform bill.
The President has been promising to deliver on immigration reform since he used it as a major selling point during his 2012 reelection campaign. Putting immigration reform back at the top of his priority list would help strengthen his credibility and satisfy the voters who are still waiting for him to deliver.
Congress might not be ready to agree on Obamacare and many other types of government spending, but immigration reform is a topic that has real potential to succeed with bipartisan support. Just last week, 8 House members were arrested at an immigration reform march on the National Mall. Due to the shutdown, approval of Republican congressmen has fallen substantially in comparison to their Democrat colleagues, and immigration reform would be a sure bet in securing more Hispanic and Asian voters for the next Presidential election. Hopefully the silver lining of the shutdown will be Congress’ new found motivation to pass real, bipartisan reform laws, with immigration reform as their first and easiest choice.
