New President - new policy
By Andrew Chappelle, Communications Intern
More than 64 million Americans recently voted in a national election, electing Democrat Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States. While the last few weeks of the contest between Senators John McCain and Barack Obama were filled with all sorts of issues, ranging from the current financial crisis and the war in Iraq, to not-so-important topics like Joe the Plumber and lipstick on pigs, one topic was noticeably absent from most campaign coverage: immigration policy.
Neither candidate had a particular desire to bring up what has been, unfortunately, a very polarizing topic in this election season, especially when each would have been unable to draw significant contrasts to the other’s plan.
According to Change.gov, the website of the Office of the President-elect, Obama’s immigration policy rests on 5 tenets:
1.) Creating “secure” borders.
2.) Fixing the dysfunctional immigration bureaucracy.
3.) Removing the incentives to enter illegally by cracking down on employers who hire undocumented immigrants.
4.) Providing a path to citizenship which would allow undocumented immigrants in good standing to come out of the shadows and have the opportunity to become citizens.
5.) Promoting economic development in Mexico and other Central American countries to decrease illegal immigration.
Let’s get a conversation going. How do you think Obama will change immigration policy?
November 10th, 2008 at 10:33 pm
Aside from his family background and past experiences, many Americans are questioning this proposed policy by Obama, which is the “change”. The people have pointed America’s next President of the United States. By electing Barack Obama this seems like U.S. has chosen this what we called “Change”. Without a doubt change is waiting for us, whether this is for the better or for the worse is yet to be seen. It’s obvious that Americans believe Obama will bring a positive change to our country. He spoke promising words to restore confidence in the hearts of the unsure with plans to lower taxes for the middle class, put a timeline on the war in Iraq, and cut the federal budget “line by line.” However, what many Americans fail to realize is the fact that Obama also supports the elimination of payday lending industries. He thinks demolishing the payday loan industry will protect low-income families from being victimized by predatory lenders. However, this will be a threat to our financial freedom. Maybe Obama will bring positive change to the United States, but taking away one of the most reliable resource many people have come to depend on during financial fallbacks is not only a risk to our rights to financial freedom, but it is clearly NOT a great start to create the positive change we all desperately need.
November 11th, 2008 at 3:46 pm
I don’t really think he’ll do much beyond adding people to the border. After all, he will want to get re-elected and so if there’s any real hope of this issue getting solved, it’ll be in his second term.