On Thursday, July 1, President Barack Obama delivered his much anticipated speech on immigration reform at American University.

Prefacing the core issues at hand, President Obama began by praising the immigrant population—a group that has been “consequential in building this country . . . [and has] made America the engine of the global economy”. Three days before the Fourth of July, a day made possible by the conviction of our immigrant forefathers, this could not be more appropriate.

While President Obama did not declare any specific measures during his address, he did acknowledge the need for the comprehensive reform of a “broken immigration system” beginning with the United States’ southern borders. According to Obama, there are currently 11 million illegal immigrants living in the United States. Instead of placing blame on such individuals, Obama faults those working on Capitol Hill, citing fear among politicians of tackling such a contentious issue. Obama reasons that these illegal immigrants, despite their intentions of making an honest living, become victims of unscrupulous business practices that ultimately deprive the United States of billions of dollars in tax revenue.

Upon discussing the plight of illegal immigrants, Obama asserts that undocumented entry into the United States, for whatever reason, makes a “mockery of all those who are going through the process of immigrating legally”. In addition to calling on illegal immigrants to rightly own up to their crimes in order to obtain citizenship, the President cites heavy backlogs, the separation of families, and high fees as other examples of a far from perfect immigration system.

As Obama has done in prior speeches, he once again decried the measures of Arizona SB1070, stating that passage of the act would not only make the job of law enforcement much more difficult, but that it would also infringe on the rights of legal citizens and residents.

Obama further explains his rationale by arguing that the United States will not benefit from a “patchwork of local immigration rules where we all know one clear national standard is needed. Our task then is to make our national laws actually work—to shape a system that reflects our values as a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants.  And that means being honest about the problem, and getting past the false debates that divide the country rather than bring it together”.

Through all of this, President Obama remains quite hopeful of immigration reform, proposing a two-fold process that will address problems surrounding both legal and illegal immigration.

Currently, he says, “we have more boots on the ground on the Southwest border than at any time in our history. We doubled the personnel assigned to Border Enforcement Security Task Forces. We tripled the number of intelligence analysts along the border.  For the first time, we’ve begun screening 100 percent of southbound rail shipments. And as a result, we’re seizing more illegal guns, cash and drugs than in years past. Contrary to some of the reports that you see, crime along the border is down. And statistics collected by Customs and Border Protection reflect a significant reduction in the number of people trying to cross the border illegally”. 

Along with efforts to stem illegal immigration, Obama states that it is just as important to fix the current legal immigration system, something the President believes has already begun to happen with the elimination of “background checks that at one point stretched back almost a year” and the fact that “people can now track the status of their immigration applications by email or text messages”, to name a few measures.

Despite the actions taken by the government to improve both illegal and legal immigration, President Obama believes that more still needs to be done.   

Near the end of his speech, President Obama makes a plea to the Democratic Party for nonpartisan support to tackle these issues. According to Obama, the “question now is whether we will have the courage and the political will to pass a bill through Congress, to finally get it done”.

As the official passage of Arizona SB1070 nears, it will be interesting to see what steps the Obama administration takes next.

To view the entire speech, please click here.

We at Zhang and Associates, P.C. are friends of the immigrant community. In 2007, 2009, and 2010, some of our firm’s attorneys including Jerry Zhang, Joe Zhou, and Bennett Wisniewski scheduled several meetings with U.S. congressmen and senators to discuss employment-based immigration problems, particularly issues surrounding per country limitations. In addition, our lobbying attorneys have diligently fought to implement a system to recapture unused employment based visas not allocated due to USCIS processing delays and  have pushed forth the need to increase the annual H-1B quota. It is our hope that a comprehensive immigration reform bill will be passed later this year.