Rick Grimaldi: The Immigration Gambit
The President continues to use the pulpit of the Presidency to assist his re-election effort. He has the right as the incumbent to do this. Nonetheless, the more he doubles down on issues such as his late announced support of gay marriage and now his use of executive authority to not seek the deportation of children of illegal immigrants, the more he looks like he is running from the one issue that matters in this campaign - jobs and the economy.
To be certain I, unlike many of my brethren to the right, believe that this country needs real immigration reform, and deporting the approximately 11million undocumented or illegal, depending upon your preferred nomenclature, immigrants is not a realistic solution (we are talking about numbers roughly the size of Ohio according to USA Today). So conceptually I agree with the notion that we ought not to penalize the children who through no fault of their own find themselves in this country and according to the executive order must meet certain requirement in order to remain. But let's be clear this is an attempt to pander to the Hispanic vote. Will it work? Maybe; it may also improve Marco Rubio's chances as being named as Mitt Romney's running mate.
Rubio, the self professed son of Cuban immigrants is the current darling of the GOP and in a fight for a large segment of the voting population might just be the answer to Obama's solicitous attempt to court that vote. Rubio himself has been working in the Senate on comprehensive immigration reform legislation. Rubio has been critical of the President's announcement suggesting that it makes it harder to achieve that comprehensive reform. I suggest that if he and the Republicans want to "own" this issue they applaud the President's move and move on. They should refocus, as the Romney campaign has done, on the key issues and move forward with a real workable immigration solution that Romney and Republicans can run with and on in the Fall. At the end of the day the immigration issue is actually tied to the economy.
