Dagoberto Ibarra, a widely known Milwaukee-area real estate developer uttered a racial slur to describe President Barack Obama during a news conference Wednesday at Waukesha City Hall. Credit: Michael Sears

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Waukesha — A Milwaukee businessman uttered a racial slur to describe President Barack Obama during a news conference Wednesday in Waukesha City Hall that was organized by Wisconsin business leaders as part of a national call for immigration reform.

"I'm not seeing anybody doing anything," said Dagoberto Ibarra, who ran for alderman in Milwaukee's 8th District in 2004. "This is the most useless Congress in the last eight years ... because a (N-word) is in charge."

Ibarra also accused Republicans of being Nazis and the tea party of being similar to the Ku Klux Klan, and he said Democrats had done nothing to fix the country's immigration laws.

The racial slur against Obama came at the end of an impassioned speech in which Ibarra criticized the failure of both political parties to produce comprehensive immigration reform, a failure he attributed to discrimination against Latinos.

"If you're white you're OK," he said. "If you're not white, you're selling drugs, you're smuggling, you're no good."

Later, in a telephone interview, Ibarra at first denied describing the president with a racial slur.

"I was making reference to what Republicans say," he said.

He later apologized for the comment.

His words cast him as the latest offender in what some perceive as widespread prejudice against the president.

The last highly publicized anti-Obama slur hit the stands Sunday when a monthly newspaper in New York printed the headline, "The N----r in the White House." The headline prompted harsh criticism from liberal commentators even though the article itself was pro-Obama, denouncing what it referred to as the "racist" attitude of far right voters.

With the president's approval rating stuck around 43% and a recent poll claiming he is the worst president since World War II, some critics have suggested that Obama's lack of popularity may have more to do with his race than his politics.

But at the news conference Wednesday in Waukesha, conservative business leaders expressed a desire for Republican legislators to work with Obama to develop immigration reform. They denounced Ibarra's remark about the president, saying they were unaware of the businessman's views and hadn't expected him to speak in the first place.

"Orville (Seymer, of the conservative group Citizens for Responsible Government) asked him to help assist us by being part of the backdrop for the visual," said George Klaetsch, a member of the Partnership for a New Economy, an immigration reform group founded by former New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.

Klaetsch and Seymer, who both spoke at the news conference, had appeared nervous when Ibarra approached the microphone.

"The first four minutes of his speech were genuine, but his comments at the end were unplanned and unnecessary," Klaetsch said after the news conference.

The conference was part of the National Day of Action for Immigration Reform, a coordinated effort by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and half a dozen business, manufacturing and agriculture organizations to urge Congress and the administration not to abandon its attempt to put together an immigration bill before the August recess.

Though the speakers at City Hall in Waukesha wavered when asked what specific policy measures they would support, several expressed the need to pass legislation that would allow the 11 million undocumented immigrants in this country to work legally and contribute to the U.S. economy through taxes and consumer spending.

"Hispanics and Latinos are hard-working people," Seymer said. "They're family oriented, they're very religious, and they're very entrepreneurial. I think those are good American values that we can appreciate, so I'm here to ask Congressmen (Jim) Sensenbrenner, (Paul) Ryan, (Reid) Ribble, and congressman (Sean) Duffy to move this issue forward, because I think it's time."

Earlier in the news conference, Klaetsch emphasized the importance of framing immigration reform as an economic issue.

"Getting 11 million undocumented immigrants into the legal economy is more of a benefit than trying to figure out how to send all 11 million back,” he said, citing a recent Partnership for a New Economy poll in which 65% of 855 likely voters in Wisconsin — including 59% of Republicans — supported legal status for illegal immigrants.

The √Rev. Joe Angel Medina, chairman of the Wisconsin Assembly of Conservative Hispanics, said that although he supported reform legislation, he would not back general amnesty.

for the country’s 11 million illegal immigrants.

“I don’t believe in pardoning the undocumented immigrants,” he said after the news conference. A better solution, he said, can be found in U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan’s proposals, which focus on border security, a guest-worker program and a “one strike” process for undocumented immigrants to apply for legal residency after a lengthy period of probation.

In response to a question about the influx of women and children at the U.S.-Mexico border, √Seymer offered a metaphor: Imagine if a young immigrant knocked at your door and asked for food, he said. Most people would help, but what if more children started knocking?

“At some point, the cupboards are empty, the refrigerator is empty,” he said. “At what point do we stop?”