TIME
By Alex Rogers
August 28, 2014
Seeking a change in deportations policy and an energized liberal base for the midterm elections
A
top labor leader predicted Thursday that President Barack Obama will
use his executive authority to make changes in immigration policy
without congressional cooperation,
but also castigated him for the high rate of deportations under his
watch.
“He’s
going to do something; I just hope it’s bold enough to be worthwhile,”
Richard Trumka, head of the AFL-CIO, told reporters at a Christian
Science Monitor breakfast.
“No matter what he does the right wing is going to go bonkers and say
he doesn’t care about anything—[that] he isn’t enforcing the law.”
Obama
has been under pressure from liberals to work around congressional
opposition to comprehensive immigration reform by issuing executive
orders. Trumka said that could
be politically savvy with the midterm elections approaching—so long as
Obama goes far enough to energize the liberal base.
“If he goes mild he’ll energize the right but he won’t energize the center and the left,” Trumka said.
The
AFL-CIO, an umbrella union group, wants the President to defer
deportations, grant work authorization to “low-priority” undocumented
immigrants, and restore the Immigration
and Customs Enforcement agency’s authority over local law enforcement,
among other demands.
Trumka
said Thursday that the current “deportation policy doesn’t make sense,”
and that Obama fell into a “classic trap” set by Republicans, raising
the number of the
deportations without guaranteeing a comprehensive immigration bill in
return.
“What
it did do is undermine the support [Obama] had in the Latino community
because those communities really believe that they are under attack
right now,” Trumka said.
“You’re seeing families split up.”
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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