Obama tells audience he will make immigration his "top priority"
Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama touched on immigration at the League of United Latin American Citizens National Convention on Tuesday. But it was Barack Obama who perhaps made the biggest impression by promising to make immigration reform the "top priority" of his first year in office. McCain has recently backed away from his strongest efforts at comprehensive immigration reform.
Otherwise, there were some major differences between the two speeches. McCain focused on the economy, an issue that polls reveal is most important to Hispanic voters:
A recent report says small businesses have created 233,000 jobs so far this year while other sectors are losing jobs. Small businesses are the job engine of America, and I will make it easier for them to grow and create more jobs. There are two million Latino owned businesses in America, a number that is growing very rapidly. The first consideration we should have when debating tax policy is how we can help those companies grow and increase the prosperity of the millions of American families whose economic security depends on their success.
McCain also talked about energy (more nuclear power!), health care (health care tax credits!) and, of course, immigration:
I and many other colleagues twice attempted to pass comprehensive immigration legislation to fix our broken borders; ensure respect for the laws of this country; recognize the important economic necessity of immigrant laborers; apprehend those who came here illegally to commit crimes; and deal practically and humanely with those who came here, as my distant ancestors did, to build a better, safer life for their families, without excusing the fact they came here illegally or granting them privileges before those who have been waiting their turn outside the country.
He ended by remembering a Mexican American who had been a POW with him in Vietnam and acknowledged the number of Hispanic troops serving today in Iraq and Afghanistan. Read the prepared text of McCain's speech here.
McCain received a warm welcome at the convention, but he didn't really tell them what they wanted to hear: that he would continue to fight for comprehensive immigration reform, including a path to citizenship. But perhaps responding to the Republican base—which isn't so keen on immigration—he's backed away from his earlier efforts.
It was Obama who scored a hit with this audience, Marisa Treviño wrote today on her blog, Latina Lista:
In all honesty, there were not high expectations that either candidate's appearance would provide earth-shattering news. Pundits have observed that policies pertinent to the Latino constituency are "fraught with political risk." Yet between the two, Obama delivered more of what a Latino audience was waiting for: a personalized speech that, while regurgitating Wikipedia facts regarding well-known historical injustices committed against Latinos, it still was specific enough that the same speech couldn't be used for any other event for a non-Latino audience. But the buzz that Obama's speech had that McCain's lacked was a promise Obama made: to make immigration reform his top priority in his first year in office.
That goes a much longer way than delivering a generic speech about the economy, business tax rates, employment insurance and finally devoting one small paragraph towards the end of the speech to the issue (immigration reform) that impacts too many Latino communities/families in this nation, as Sen. McCain's speech did.
In fact, Obama dinged McCain pretty good:
Now, I know Senator McCain used to buck his party on immigration by fighting for comprehensive reform, and I admired him for it. But when he was running for his party’s nomination, he abandoned his courageous stance, and said that he wouldn’t even support his own legislation if it came up for a vote. Well, for eight long years, we’ve had a President who made all kinds of promises to Latinos on the campaign trail, but failed to live up to them in the White House, and we can’t afford that anymore. We need a President who isn’t going to walk away from something as important as comprehensive reform when it becomes politically unpopular.
Read the prepared text of Obama's speech here.
This story has been corrected. A previous version identified Marisa Treviño as having traveled with the Clinton campaign; she did not.
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