ORLANDO, Fla. — A week after unveiling a new immigration policy, President Barack Obama made a direct appeal to a large conference of Hispanics on Friday, facing a constituency with the potential to be crucial to his re-election campaign.
Obama addressed hundreds of members of the National Association of Latino Elected andAppointed Officials, just a day after his likely Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, appeared at the same conference. Romney, who courted conservative primary voters with hard-line opposition to illegal immigration, pledged Thursday to loosen some restrictions on the flow of legal foreign workers.
Obama, without mentioning Romney by name, drew a sharp distinction with his challenger on immigration, reminding the crowd of Romney’s opposition to the DREAM Act, the legislation intended to put many illegal alien students and military veterans on a path to citizenship. The bill was defeated in Congress after Republicans opposed it.
“Your speaker from yesterday, he’s promised to veto the DREAM Act, and we should take him at his word,” Obama said.
By contrast, the president said, he announced last week a Department of Homeland Security directive to stop deporting some illegal aliens who were brought to the country as children and have gone on to be productive and otherwise law-abiding residents.
“I refused to keep looking deserving young people in the eye and telling them, ‘Tough luck, the politics are too hard,’” Obama said.
Hispanics, who had helped power Obama’s 2008 victory, had grown increasingly frustrated with his administration over the slow progress of immigration changes. And employment has hit the Hispanic community particularly hard, with 11 percent out of work compared to the national rate of 8.2 percent.
In 2008, Obama had told the same conference that immigration would be a top priority, but he had little to show for it after the defeat of the DREAM Act.
Romney’s camp focused on economic issues in their response Friday.
“No election-year speech can cover up the president’s job-killing policies that have led to 11 percent Hispanic unemployment and millions of Hispanics living in poverty,” Amanda Henneberg, a Romney spokesman, said in a statement. “On Day 1, Mitt Romney will take our country in a new direction and get our economy back on the right track.”
Obama addressed the crowd not long after Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., a rising Republican star who has been mentioned as a potential Romney running mate, criticized the president during his own speech at the conference.
Rubio, who had been crafting a scaled back version of the DREAM Act, was blindsided by Obama’s immigration announcement last week.
“I don’t care who gets the credit,” Rubio told the crowd in the ballroom. “I don’t. But it exposes the fact that this issue is all about politics for some people. Not just Democrats, Republicans, too.”
But Rubio ripped Obama’s approach on immigration and suggested that the president has a purely political motivation in making his recent appeal to Hispanics.
“I know in a few moments you’ll hear from the president. I was tempted to come here and tell you, ‘Hey, he hasn’t been here in three years. What a coincidence; it’s an election year,’” Rubio said, drawing some boos. “I was tempted to tell you, ‘Why didn’t he make this issue a priority?’”
Rubio said the immigration debate won’t be settled until Democrats and Republicans stop using the issue toincite “panic” among voters as a way to win elections and raise money.
The country will neither “round up and deport” nor grant amnesty to about 11 million illegal aliens in the country, he said. “Somewhere between those two ideas is the solution,” said Rubio, who received a standing ovation from the largely Democratic group.
Obama spent much of his remarks focusing on his campaign message of building a stronger middle class, and he emphasized policies that he said have helped small businesses owned by Hispanics and his healthcare law that requires coverage for the uninsured.
But it was his remarks on immigration that drew the most applause from the audience.
He blamed Republicans for blocking the DREAM Act and tied Romney directly to Republican leaders on Capitol Hill.
Obama also emphasized that the directive he announced is not intended as a long-term solution to immigration issues.
“It’s not amnesty. Congress still needs to come up with a long-range solution,” he said. “To those who are saying Congress should be the one to fix this, absolutely. For those who saywe should do this in a bipartisan fashion, absolutely. 1 My door’s been open for 3 /2 years. They know where to find me.”
The president added: “I’ve said time and again, ‘Send me the DREAM Act. I will sign it right away.’”
Arturo Vargas, the executive director of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, pointed to the enthusiastic reaction of Friday’s crowd to Obama’s mention of the immigration move last week as “evidence of the fact that it was something long overdue.”
“It was something many people in this room were asking for - some kind of administrative action in the absence of legislative action,” Vargas said in an interview. “But I think everybody understands, it’s only temporary. It’s not a solution. And in fact, that’s what I found most compelling of Gov. Romney’s remarks yesterday - when he acknowledged that we have a broken immigration system. The fact that he said that to me, then, suggests that he understands that we need a fix.”
“Obviously, I think there is some politics to this, but it doesn’t take away from the fact that it’s the right thing to do,” said Janet Murguia, president and chief executive officer of the National Council of La Raza. “And people see it as a really positive step and possibly a breakthrough moment, even if it’s on a temporary basis.It’s offering folks in the community out there a little bit of hope that this isn’t the end of a process, but maybe the beginning.”
But a conservative Hispanic leader said the president’s words rang hollow to him given the lack of progress in forging a bipartisan solution.
“Where is the leadership?” asked Alfonso Aguilar, executive director of the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles.
He said President George W. Bush did a better job of working across the aisle on immigration and argued that Romney would be more likely to find a solution with a Republican Congress next year.
“We have a better chance of getting something constructive done in immigration with Romney than Obama,” Aguilar said.
ROMNEY HOSTING DONORS
Romney, meanwhile, was to host a posh retreat inPark City, Utah, for his top donors this weekend, giving the campaign’s major financial backers a chance to dine with their favored presidential candidate and other top Republicans.
The retreat will offer private meetings and receptions, with a chance to see key Republicans such as Sen. John McCain of Arizona, former Florida Gov. Job Bush and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, according to a Romney campaign e-mail.
The donors, invited if they’ve raised at least $50,000 for Romney’s White House run, can sit in on strategy meetings that provide detailed updates of the campaign’s progress.
They’ll also mingle with Romney’s top advisers and Karl Rove, founder of an independent super political action committee helping Romney this election.
The event is closed to journalists.
Although currently enjoying a financial advantage over Obama, Romney is wasting little time securing and maintaining high-dollar support to win the White House.
He and the Republicans raised $76 million in May, newly released figures show, compared with $60 million from Obama and the Democratic Party.
A schedule of events, obtained by The Associated Press, details get-togethers among the campaign’s state fundraising chiefs and a dinner with Romney.
Also scheduled for the weekend are an afternoon tea and small group dinners around Park City.
The retreat ends Sunday with a round of golf for donors who’ve raised at least $100,000.
The retreat is one of many perks that Romney is offering to his top donors, not uncommon for candidates seeking the presidency.
Those donors who pulled in at least $500,000 for the campaign are entitled to weekly campaign briefings, VIP entry to finance events across the country, and special access to the Republican National Convention this summer.
Information for this article was contributed by David Nakamura of The Washington Post; by Peter Baker of The New York Times; by Roger Runningen, Michael C. Bender, Kate Andersen Brower, Kathleen Hunter and John Mc-Cormick of Bloomberg News; and by Jack Gillum of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 06/23/2012