Hillarysworld

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Immigration Reform Dead in 2010?

As I noted yesterday, the chances of getting an immigration-reform bill passed this year dimmed dramatically in the wake of Scott Brown's victory in the Massachusetts special election. Last night President Obama's SOTU speech pretty much snuffed out any remaining possibility. He waited until roughly word 6,300 of a 7,000-word speech to address the issue. He devoted all of one sentence to it ("And we should continue the work of fixing our broken immigration system," etc. etc.). And he offered no specifics for a potential measure or timeline to get it done. That fleeting reference was "a crumb that was placed on the domestic-policy-agenda table to really satisfy the hunger of the immigrant and Latino communities," says the Rev. Samuel Rodriguez of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, which has pushed for a reform package. "It was the death knell of immigration reform in 2010."

This is no surprise. Given that much of last year was squandered on a health-care debate that has yet to produce an agreement, and given that Americans are clamoring for the administration to focus on jobs and the economy, immigration has fallen far down the priority list, for both the president and Congress.

More . . .

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