Romney promises Hispanics policy fix

— Mitt Romney told Hispanic elected officials Thursday that President Barack Obama takes their votes for granted and has failed to lead on immigration issues, while offering few details on his own plan other than pledging a “longterm solution” to replace a temporary Obama measure.

“For two years, this president had huge majorities in the House and Senate; he was free to pursue any policy he pleased,” the presumptive Republican presidential nominee said. “But he did nothing to advance a permanent fix for our broken immigration system. Nothing. Instead, he failed to act until facing a tough re-election and trying to secure your vote.”

Romney’s speech to about 1,000 members of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials follows last Friday’s decision by the Department of Homeland Security to exempt from deportation some illegal aliens age 30 and under who were brought to the U.S. before they turned 16 and who have been in the country for at least five-straight years. Those exempted must have no criminal history and must be attending school or have earned a high school degree or its equivalent, or have served in the military.

“Some people have asked if I will let stand the president’s executive order,” Romney said, speaking in a ballroom at Disney’s Contemporary Resort. “The answer is that I will put in place my own longterm solution that will replace and supersede the president’s temporary measure.”

As he has before, Romney said he favored awarding permanent residency to foreign students who obtain advanced degrees in math, science or engineering at U.S. universities, saying they should have green cards stapled to their diplomas. He also repeated support for providing a pathway to legal status for illegal aliens who serve in the military.

He made only passing mention in his 17-minute speech of his promise to complete a 2,000-mile border fence to help stem illegal immigration. He did note, however, his father’s birth to American parents living in a Mormon colony in Mexico.

Romney’s plan to reallocate green cards for those with families and end immigration caps for spouses and minor children would mark a change from the current system, which is something of a first-come, first-served approach.

The directive from the Department of Homeland Security put pressure on Romney as he seeks to win Hispanic voters angered by anti-illegal immigration positions he took during the Republican primary campaign.

Conservatives have criticized Romney for not pushing back more aggressively against the new policy to limit deportations of young aliens, which they have labeled “back-door amnesty.”

Obama is to speak to the Hispanic group today in the same Fantasia Ballroom where Romney spoke.

In response to the speech, Obama’s campaign spotlighted the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act, which would let many illegal aliens stay in the U.S. and provide a path to citizenship.

“Today, Mitt Romney told the largest national gathering of Hispanic elected officials: ‘When I make a promise to you, I will keep it,’” Gabriela Domenzain, the president’s campaign director of Hispanic press, said in an e-mailed statement. “But in front of an audience of Republican primary voters, he called the DREAM Act a ‘handout’ and promised to veto it.”

Romney told the audience that Obama is taking the Hispanic vote for granted.

“He may admit that he hasn’t kept every promise,” Romney said, previewing the president’s speech today. “He’ll probably say that, even though you aren’t better off today than you were four years ago, things could be worse. He’ll imply that you don’t really have an alternative. I think he’s taking your vote for granted.”

As he has throughout the campaign, Romney stressed that Hispanic households have been among the hardest hit by the struggling economy.

“Is the America of 11 percent Hispanic unemployment the America of our dreams?” he asked. “We can do better. We can prosper again, with the powerful recovery we’ve all been waiting for.”

Romney received tepid applause from the audience, getting some boos when he mentioned repealing the healthcare law Obama championed. Juan Zapata, a Republican and the Hispanic group’s chairman, said the mostly Democratic audience was “polite.”

The crowd didn’t hear a specific plan from Romney for a permanent DREAM Act or a proposal for illegal aliens in the country, said Ana Navarro, a Republican strategist based in Florida.

“I wish I heard more,” she said. “Hispanics who want a solution for the 11 million undocumented here are faced with two options: a guy who makes big promises and doesn’t deliver or a guy who makes no promises.”

The U.S. Supreme Court is expected next week to weigh in on an immigration issue with a ruling on Arizona’s law requiring police officers in the state to check people’s legal status as part of routine traffic stops. The Arizona law also makes it a crime for illegal aliens to work in the state.

Hispanics helped propel Obama to the White House in the 2008 election. He won 67 percent of their vote, compared with 31 percent for Republican John McCain, according to exit polls. In this year’s election, Hispanics could be crucial in such swing states as Florida, Colorado, Nevada and Virginia.

Earlier this year, Romney told donors in Florida that a continued Democratic trend among Hispanic voters “spells doom” for Republicans if it isn’t reversed.

During his battle to lock up the Republican nomination, Romney used tougher rhetoric when discussing illegal immigration, stressing his opposition to any proposal that gives legal status to illegal aliens without first requiring that they leave the U.S. He made no distinction at the time for those illegal aliens brought to this country as children.

Since securing the GOP nomination, Romney has stressed the pain Hispanics have suffered in the economic downturn.

Romney, 65, earlier this week disclosed that he’s considering a Hispanic as a potential vice-presidential running mate. He told reporters Tuesday that Marco Rubio, 41, is being vetted for the No. 2 spot on the Republican ticket as he challenged a news report suggesting that the Florida senator had been excluded from the search.

Rubio, a Cuban-American elected to the Senate in 2010, has been touted as a running mate by some Republicans to help Romney boost his standing among Hispanic voters. Those promoting him include former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, the brother of one former president and son of another.

Rubio said Thursday that Obama was interested only in establishing a political “talking point” in the change in deportation policy because he didn’t consult congressional Republicans about it.

“This White House didn’t reach out to anybody,” Rubio told reporters at a breakfast in Washington sponsored by The Christian Science Monitor.

After Obama’s announcement, Rubio dropped plans to introduce legislation that could grant work visas to some young people brought to the U.S. illegally.

“If you’re really interested in a bipartisan solution and you read in the newspaper that there’s a Republican senator working on an idea, don’t you reach out to them and say, ‘Hey, how does your idea work? I’m just curious,’” Rubio said. “That never happened.”

In other developments Thursday, Obama sought to turn up the pressure on Congress to prevent a doubling — in nine days’ time — of student-loan interest rates.

“It’s mind-boggling that we have this stalemate in Washington,” Obama said at the White House. “Congress has had the time to fix this for months.”

Unless Congress acts by July 1, the interest rate on new loans will rise to 6.8 percent from the current 3.4 percent, increasing costs for more than 7 million students and adding an average of $1,000 to college debt, according to the White House.

Freezing interest rates on subsidized Stafford loans for another year would cost almost $6 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The House passed a bill April 27 to avert the rate increase, sending it to the Senate.

Lawmakers and the White House are in a dispute over how to pay for it. The administration has threatened to veto the House-passed bill because it would end a publichealth fund to pay for the rate freeze.

Republican leaders in Congress, Mitch McConnell in the Senate and Speaker John Boehner in the House, sent the White House on May 31 a list of what they said were bipartisan offers on how to fund the rate freeze. The administration hasn’t responded.

Information for this article was contributed by Kathleen Hunter, Michael C. Bender, Kate Andersen Brower and Roger Runningen of Bloomberg News; by Steve Peoples and Alicia Caldwell of The Associated Press; and by Paul West of the Tribune Washington Bureau.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 06/22/2012

Upcoming Events