MIAMI—Likening immigration reform to the great civil-rights movements in US history, President Barack Obama vowed during a brief visit to Miami on Wednesday to veto any legislation undoing his executive order protecting from deportation up to 5 million people who are in the country illegally.
“In the short term, if Mr. [Mitch] McConnell, the leader of the Senate, and the Speaker of the House, John Boehner want to have a vote on whether what I’m doing is legal or not, they can have that vote,” Obama said, almost daring congressional leaders to challenge him. “I will veto that vote because I’m absolutely confident that what we’re doing is the right thing to do.”
His veto threat was met with rousing applause from the friendly audience assembled at the Florida International University, where Obama taped an hourlong town hall-style meeting hosted by Miami-based Telemundo and sister network MSNBC. The event, moderated by bilingual anchor Jose Diaz-Balart, was later nationally televised on both networks.
McConnell, of Kentucky, wants a stand alone bill blocking Obama’s 2014 actions, which were supposed to take effect this week but have been stalled by a Texas federal judge.
Boehner, of Ohio, is waiting for the Senate’s move, after House Republicans passed a budget for the Homeland Security Department that wouldn’t pay for the president’s plan.
Obama defied Republican leaders while trying to persuade undocumented immigrants—who would be covered by his actions but are now in limbo—that his administration has not given up.
“We have appealed very aggressively. We’re going to be as aggressive as we can,” he said. “In the meantime, what we said to Republicans is, ‘Instead of trying to hold hostage funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which is so important for our national security, fund that and let’s get on with actually passing comprehensive immigration reform.’”
Republicans characterized Obama’s Miami visit as a strictly political move intent not on resolving a problem but on bashing the GOP to Hispanic voters, a crucial bloc in Florida and other swing states.
“President Obama tells Americans he wants to work with Republicans, but his actions don’t live up to his rhetoric,” Republican National Committee Spokesman Ali Pardo said in a statement. “And as the president struggles to defend his executive action that was blocked by a federal court, his partisan campaign stops aren’t making things better.”
There is little chance that Congress will act during the remainder of Obama’s final term, with the 2016 presidential-campaign season already under way and Republicans angered that the president has wielded executive authority in what they consider an overreach.
Obama nevertheless insisted: “I haven’t given up passing it while I’m president.”
Like other Spanish-language interviewers have done in high-profile settings, Diaz-Balart reminded Obama that he could have made an immigration push during his first two years in office, when Democrats controlled the House and the Senate.
TNS
Image credits: Pedro Portal/Miami Herald/TNS