Obama Aide Sketches Timeline for Immigration Reform

Julia Preston in the NY Times:

While acknowledging that the recession makes the political battle more difficult, President Obama plans to begin addressing the country’s immigration system this year, including looking for a path for illegal immigrants to become legal, a senior administration official said on Wednesday.

Mr. Obama will frame the new effort — likely to rouse passions on all sides of the highly divisive issue — as “policy reform that controls immigration and makes it an orderly system,” said the official, Cecilia Muñoz, deputy assistant to the president and director of intergovernmental affairs in the White House.

Mr. Obama plans to speak publicly about the issue in May, administration officials said, and over the summer he will convene working groups, including lawmakers from both parties and a range of immigration groups, to begin discussing possible legislation for as early as this fall.

You hear the usual noises from Dan Stein and Roy Beck, but they and their supporters have never liked Obama and are never going to vote for him.

Rep. Luis Gutiérrez's Philadelphia stop on the Family Unity Tour also merits a mention in the article.  Gutiérrez deserves credit for keeping the pressure on Obama to keep his campaign promise to the Latin@ community that strongly turned out for him on election day.

And Mitt Romney's new(re)found support of comprehensive immigration reform may signal a recognition by GOP leaders that demagoguing immigrants will only lead to long-term irrelevance.