UAN GONZÁLEZ: —on getting some movement on immigration reform? REP. LUIS GUTIÉRREZ: Very important moment. So, in December of 2010, we passed the DREAM Act in the House of Representatives. It fails to reach a cloture vote in the Senate. It’s the 18th, 19th, 20th of December. President calls me and Bob Menendez, Nydia Velázquez and another group to come to the White House. It’s just before Christmans, two or three days before Christmas. And he says to us, Luis, Congressman, we can’t get comprehensive immigration reform, but I want to work to protect the immigrant community during the next two years, until I’m re-elected president of the United States. We put our thinking caps up, and we come up with the—and we come up with deferred action. We say to the president of the United States to use his discretion to make sure that certain immigrant groups aren’t deported from the United States. That is to say, Use your discretion as president of the United States. So we get into a battle, and all of a sudden there’s actors and actresses, Eva Longoria from Desperate Housewives, on the lawn of the White House, saying, Well, the president doesn’t have any power. The Congress has to act. He cannot do anything individually. The momentum continues to grow. The Hispanic Caucus challenges the president. The DREAMers across this country challenge the president. I remember at one point at National Council of La Raza the president is speaking to them, and the chant from the audience is, Yes, you can, Mr. President! Marco Rubio, in a move—opportunistic move, says, Well, you know what? I want to do something for the DREAMers. We say to the president and the president’s staff, If Marco Rubio is going to stop the deportation and he stops short of citizenship, we think we need to stop the deportations and protect the DREAMers. We think that that should be our basic goal at this particular point. And then the president of the United States, four months before the election, signs an executive order. And today there are 500,000. I have never been more thankful to the president of the United States than when he took that action. But we should remember that for a year and a half, the president of the United States, in every venue that he could—that he created venues. He created one in El Paso, another one in Florida, in which he specifically said, I cannot take any action. In the end, he took the action he said he did not have the ability to carry out. And we had a triumph, because of the consistent and persistent effort of our community. AMY GOODMAN: And as Juan wrote in his column in the New York Daily News, that we’re about to pass this horrid landmark—I think that’s how you put it, Juan—of two million deportations under President Obama. Your thoughts on that, Congressman Gutiérrez? REP. LUIS GUTIÉRREZ: Well, number one, look, President Barack Obama’s history, his tenure as president of the United States, is going to be marked by one of two things: being the president of the United States that’s deported more people than anyone else—I mean, at the rate he’s going, we don’t do comprehensive immigration reform, it has a devastating continuing effect on our community, and it means he will deport over three-and-a-half million people. Pretty soon, the banner headline is going be somewhere, that he’s reached the two million goal. I want a president of the United States that signs a comprehensive immigration bill, for two reasons. Number one, it stops the deportation, and it brings justice, and it brings fairness, and it brings equity to the immigrant community. And number two, secondly—not as important, but important—I want Barack Obama to be known as the president that led us to 11 million people reaching freedom in this country.
Posted on: Tue, 22 Oct 2013 19:20:02 +0000
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