Speaking at a naturalization ceremony for 28 brand new American citizens, President Obama called on Congress to fix the nation’s “broken” immigration system without delay.
“We just got, at this point, to work up the political courage to do what needs to be done,” Obama said at the White House event, citing a broad bipartisan consensus on the basic structure of a comprehensive reform bill. “I expect the debate to begin next month. I want to sign that bill into law as soon as possible.”
As Obama acknowledged, the House and Senate are making progress on bipartisan legislation. But neither side has released a bill and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), chair of the Judiciary Committee that will oversee immigration legislation, recently complained that a bill can’t be marked up until May thanks to Senate negotiators’ slow pace. One of the Democrats working on the bill, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), recently pledged to finish a draft bill by the end of the month after his office was occupied by immigration activists upset over the delay.
Obama congratulated the new citizens, 13 of whom served in the U.S. military. He singled out by name a member of the Air Force from Ukraine, a member of the Navy from South Africa, a Nigerian man working on his IT doctorate, and a woman from St. Lucia who works at a non-profit promoting public health, as exemplars of American ideals.
“We’ve always defined ourselves as a nation of immigrants,” Obama said. “And we’ve always been better off for it.”
He described America’s history of large scale immigration as “one of our greatest strengths,” adding that it’s “kept our workforce young, it keeps our businesses on the cutting edge, it’s helped to build the greatest economic engine that the world has ever known.”
In order to maintain this advantage, Obama called for reform that would streamline the existing legal immigration system and would include a “responsible pathway to earned citizenship” for existing undocumented immigrants.
“If we want to keep attracting the best and brightest the world has to offer,” he said, “we need to do a better job of welcoming them.”
