Immigration activists disillusioned with Obama, Democrats as amnesty afterglow fades
The heady sense of victory immigrant rights activists had last year after President Obama announced his deportation amnesty has faded in recent weeks as the advocates sense theyve lost ground among the very Democratic leaders they were counting on to deliver at the national and state levels.
The latest blow came over the weekend in New York, where Gov. Andrew Cuomo has scrapped plans for a state-level Dream Act granting in-state tuition to illegal immigrants as part of the budget spawning a hunger strike from young illegal immigrants who expected him to come through.
Nationally, meanwhile, Mr. Obama is taking fire after his immigration service earlier this month deported a Mennonite pastor with American citizen children who had been living without authorization for years, but who came to agents attention because of a drunken driving conviction from the 1990s.
SEE ALSO: Immigration agency says original amnesty still approving Dreamers applications
Activists said that deportation broke the rules Mr. Obama himself laid out in November, when he said he wanted to kick out felons, not families.
It goes to who really are our champions. Thats disillusioning a lot of the electorate, said Cesar Vargas, co-director of the Dream Action Coalition. Democrats would like to make people believe that Republicans have a Latino problem. Well, Democrats are definitely facing a Latino problem that many of them arent even aware of.
The relationship between the president and immigrant rights advocates has always been rocky, dating back to his vote as a senator to build the border fence, and then extending to his failure to make good on his campaign promise to tackle immigration reform his first year in office.
Mr. Obama had appeared to smooth things over in November when he bypassed Congress and announced executive actions to grant a temporary deportation amnesty and work permits to millions of immigrants in the country illegally. At the same time Mr. Obama also announced new enforcement priorities that were supposed to lower the chances of deportation for millions of other illegal immigrants though they would not be eligible for the work permits included in his broader amnesty.
Buoyed by that success, and by polls that suggest the public is increasingly accepting of legalizing illegal immigrants, activists turned to states, pressing for legislation to grant in-state tuition to illegal immigrants, known as the Dream Act.
New York was a particular target, with a Democratic governor in Mr. Cuomo vowing to use the state budget to make it happen this year.
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Immigration activists disillusioned with Obama, Democrats as amnesty afterglow fades