President Obama spoke today about the need for comprehensive immigration reform, arguing that “immigrants have always helped to build and defend this country” and that “being an American is not a matter of blood or birth. It’s a matter of faith.”
Speaking from Washington, D.C., Obama sounded many familiar points, and said that though “some have rallied behind” Arizona’s controversial immigration policy, it is “ill-conceived.”
He continued that “we’ve always defined ourselves as a nation of immigrants,” adding that America has also been a “magnet for the best and brightest.”
“The politics” of who is allowed in the country “has always been contentious,” Obama said, but it is possible to find a “practical commonsense approach that reflects our heritage and our values” and “demands accountability from everybody.”
He also criticized those who say Congress should not move on reform until our borders are secure, because “our borders are just too vast” and resources are too limited to secure them properly at this point.
Obama added that Congress needs the “courage and the political will to pass a bill,” and it “cannot pass without Republican votes.”
“The natural impulse among those who run for office is to turn away and defer this question for another day,” he said. But we cannot allow a system that “offends our most basic American values” to remain in place.
