The Obama administration announced last week a delay on their plans for immigration reform until after the midterm elections in November. Earlier this year, the president moved for a review of current immigration and deportation policies. He expressed his intent to take action on immigration reform before the end of summer. However, White House officials said they plan to delay the reforms until after November midterms.
This delay will do nothing but hurt the Democrats’ reputation. Immigration activists feel justly betrayed by the Obama administration. Meanwhile, Republicans are using the opportunity criticize Obama’s leadership while some Democrats are turning against those in their own party in order to keep popular support.
Republicans aren’t off the hook for using immigration reform as a political tool either. Multiple members of the GOP were criticized during the 2012 presidential elections for attempting to persuade other Republicans to support immigration reform for the sole purpose of swaying minority voters.
It’s no secret that the approval ratings for our country’s Congress are abysmally low. The reasons behind these low ratings are what people seem to enjoy arguing over. For the most part though, we generally can agree that the deep partisan split between the Democratic and Republican Parties are at least somewhat to blame.
A partisan divide this drastic has no upside. All it achieves is an abundance of old white men arguing that causes delays, delays and even more delays. People are no longer surprised when they hear news that Congress is pushing back action against another important piece of legislature. It’s simply a part of life now.
The fact of the matter is that our political system has a major issue, in that the majority of our politicians are more focused on elections than making actual decisions. Too many of our nation’s legislators consider re-election as the mark of a successful career, instead of getting legislation done in the first place.
To be completely transparent, immigration reform is way too important for politicians to be using it for selfish reasons. It’s a massive problem in our country. It impacts many people and it needs to be dealt with as soon as possible. Three months may not seem like a long time to most of us, but for those who are directly affected by our nation’s immigration policies it’s going to feel like a lifetime.
When it comes to a crucial issue like immigration, our country can’t afford to be divided by party and we can’t afford to have politicians who are more concerned with being popular than being efficient. What we do need are people who can buckle down, stay focused on what is really important and do the jobs they were elected to do.
Erin Bamer can be reached at [email protected]