SPRINGDALE -- Beatriz Salas watched the president speaking of keeping families together while the father of their four children is 1,255 miles away, possibly in the dark. Electric service and the water supply in Sombrete, Mexico, are intermittent, she said.
Leonel Salazar, 39, of Rogers was deported in July, while his oldest son was in basic training with the Army National Guard, Salas said. She watched the broadcast of President Barack Obama's speech Thursday promising executive action on immigration at a watch party at Acambaro Mexican Restaurant in Springdale.
Salas, 37, of Rogers was one of about 60 people at the event, organized by a number of local charities. Organizer Mireya Reith of Fayetteville, director of the Arkansas United Community Coalition, warned the group not to fall for scams by anyone promising immediate action. It would take months for the president's plans to be carried into effect, Reith said after the speech.
"My hope is that he can stay this coming Christmas with the kids," Salas said before the speech. She had little hope of that afterwards. The president offered help to those who haven't yet been deported, but there was little in the speech to encourage those who've already been separated. Still, there was more hope now than she had, she said.
No one was satisfied with the president's decision to take executive action, said Rep. Jim Dotson, R-Bentonville, a member of the state House of Representatives. Northwest Arkansas voters will react with "frustration, but not surprise." "He hasn't followed the law before and nobody expected him to start all of a sudden tonight," he said of the president.
Asked if there as a silver lining to the president's approach, Dotson replied: "None that I'm aware of." Even those who will benefit will only have a temporary change that could only last as long as the president remains in office. "It wouldn't be wise for anyone to make any long-term plans off this," he said.
Salas and Salazar have been together since 1993 and would have married that year, she said, but marriage would have complicated his request for residency. The family lives in an old house in bad repair they meant to replace with a new house built by Salazar on the same property.
Salazar was a sub-contractor making a good living before deportation, she said. Now he's a farm laborer. "We send him money," said Eduardo, the oldest son. And the family pays legal fees that so far have amounted to tens of thousands of dollars, Salas said.
"The president's party had majorities in the House and Senate once, and the president could have passed changes in immigration then if he wanted to," said Rep.-elect Robin Lundstrum, R-Elm Springs. "He didn't because Democrats weren't going to vote for it. He doesn't want to work with Congress whoever's in it."
"Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich worked together and came up with some pretty decent welfare reform," Lundstrum said of the former Democratic president and the opposing Republican speaker of the House at the time. "This president has a complete lack of the political acumen to work with Congress whether it's Republican or Democratic."
The president's action will be unpopular with the non-Hispanic population of Northwest Arkansas, but that's partially because the action has been misrepresented by opponents, said Rep. David Whitaker, D-Fayetteville. Whitaker is an attorney. "This has been characterized as amnesty, and it's not," Whitaker said. "It is slowing down or stopping the administrative process of deportation, and it's certainly within his power to do that."
"Politically there's not a better time for him to do this," Whitaker said. "He has no more elections before the end of his term. It's as far from 2016 as it's possible to get. And by doing this on his own, he personalizes it. It's Obama and not the Democrats."
The policy the president announced was "a good first step," said Maria Baez de Hicks of Fayetteville, state Democratic Party's 3rd District Hispanic Caucus member and president of Arkansas Democratic Women. However, some of the "rhetoric he used, while I understand the reason for it, was an attempt to appease the people who oppose this. It was disheartening to hear him feeding into the myth that undocumented immigrants don't pay taxes. Still, the important thing is that he is trying to help children whose parents might be deported at any time. I can't even imagine the stress of living that way."
NW News on 11/21/2014