Obama Defends Immigration Reform Action at Town Hall Meeting - East Idaho News
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Obama Defends Immigration Reform Action at Town Hall Meeting

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032513 PresidentObama?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1418210498174Official White House Photo by Pete Souza(NASHVILLE, Tenn.) — President Obama said Tuesday that he has the authority to reform the nation’s immigration system and that the executive action he took last month does not constitute “amnesty or legalization or even a path to citizenship” for millions of undocumented immigrants.

Obama made his remarks at a town hall meeting from Casa Azafran, a community center dedicated to the rights and services for immigrants and refugees in Nashville, Tennessee.

As for his decision to protect up to five million people from deportation for the next few years, the president said that it was done to show undocumented immigrants “that the America people actually are fair minded and want to reward other than punish people who do the right thing.”

Obama suggested that he had no other choice but to act on his own given House Republicans’ refusal to move on a Senate bill passed 18 months ago. He added that the response from the GOP to his executive action “was a vote taken last week to force talented young people and workers to leave our country.”

Knowing that he won’t be in office two years down the road, the president nonetheless said that his successor, whoever that might be, won’t gamble on trying to reverse his decision, claiming that the American public won’t allow that to happen.

Responding to a criticism from Tennessee Republican Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn that he’s forcing “hard-working taxpayers to compete for jobs with illegal aliens,” Obama asserted  that immigrants have always wound up being “a net plus to our economy and a net plus to our society.”


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