Obama hasn’t reached out to Republicans to find common ground, the author writes. Obama a hypocrite on immigration

The Obama campaign likes to portray the president as Latinos’ No. 1 advocate on immigration. They know that President Barack Obama’s reelection needs the same level of support that he got from Latino voters in 2008. The problem, however, is that the campaign’s assertion is false. Obama’s record, in fact, shows that he has deported more immigrants than any president since 1892, when recordkeeping began.

First, consider Obama’s 2008 campaign promise that he would tackle immigration reform his first year in office. He now has to explain why he failed to do this: “The challenge we’ve got on immigration reform,” Obama said in a Univision interview last month, “is very simple. I’ve got a majority of Democrats who are prepared to vote for it. And I’ve got no Republicans who are prepared to vote for it.”


This is a lie. Obama had a Democratic majority in both houses of Congress during his first two years. He could have gotten something done. Yet he chose to completely ignore the issue. He was determined to ram through Congress “Obamacare” and a massive stimulus bill. But it seems he didn’t have the same level of commitment in resolving our immigration problem.

In addition, while Obama gives flowery speeches about how he wants to get something done on immigration, he hasn’t reached out to Republicans to find common ground. Though he keeps holding immigration summits at the White House — largely designed for Latino media coverage — with Latino Democrats, former Bush administration officials and Latino actors and celebrities, he has yet to call the GOP leadership for a constructive conversation about this pressing matter.

But what makes Obama the most anti-immigrant president in recent history is his policy of massive, systematic deportations. He has now deported more than 1.2 million people, breaking up hundreds of thousands of families.

Obama says the number of deportations has gone up because his administration is focusing on the removal of criminals. Yet less than 50 percent of the people removed have a criminal conviction, according to the Homeland Security Department’s own statistics. For example, 387,000 people were deported in 2010, of which only 169,000 had committed a crime.

The statistics also show that the large majority of deportations are Latinos. Roughly 73 percent are from Mexico, 8 percent from Guatemala, 6 percent from Honduras and 5 percent from El Salvador.

Remember, this is a president who talks indignantly about the immigration enforcement laws passed by GOP legislators in Arizona, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina — calling them “misdirected” and “bad law.” He has even instructed his Justice Department to challenge them in court.

I’m not defending those laws. They’re bad policy because they unfairly criminalize hardworking people who pose no threat to our communities and who our country needs to expand our economy and create jobs.

Obama’s deportation policy, however, is tougher and more punitive than any of these states. Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio may round up and detain undocumented immigrants — but he can’t deport them. Only Obama can do that. And he is — massively and systematically.

Clearly, Democrats want to make sure the public, especially Latino voters, don’t learn the facts. That the amicable Dr. Jekyll the White House projects on immigration is actually an unfriendly Mr. Hyde. They know it would be hard to continue demonizing Mitt Romney and the GOP over immigration if people learned the president’s true record.

The more Latino voters learn about Obama’s hypocrisy regarding immigration, the more they will decide not to reward him in November.

Many, in fact, may decide that, as bad as some of Romney’s immigration comments may have been during the primary, there’s no way that, as president, he could be any worse on immigration than Obama. Latinos may even view Romney’s much-mocked plan of “self-deportation” as a more compassionate approach than Obama’s policy of mass deportations.

After all, inviting undocumented immigrants to leave sounds better that forcefully removing them.

Latinos may remember that under Republican presidents they fared better on immigration. They may remember that President Ronald Reagan signed the last major immigration reform bill and President George W. Bush fought hard for a new overhaul of our dysfunctional immigration laws.

Perhaps they’ll come to realize, as I have, that there is a far better chance of getting constructive immigration reform with Romney than the current White House resident.

Alfonso Aguilar is executive director of the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles and former chief of the Office of Citizenship in the George W. Bush administration.