In 2012 when President Obama announced that by, executive order, he was stopping the deportation of young undocumented immigarnts who qualified, it was easy to think that he would finally do whatever was needed to bring 11,000,000 future Americans fully aboard.

It didn’t happen.

As a front page article in today’s New York Times reports, President Obama’s Justice Department continues to deport more immigrants than all previous Presidents combined; that his focus is on those convicted of minor offences rather than on serious offenders. He has pledged just the opposite. Obviously, for immigrants, his pledges mean nothing.

This is a serious matter not just for the immigrants sent away. America is immigration; it’s who we are and how we grow the economy. As Jeb Bush said just this week, immigrabts come here breaking a law, but “it’s not a felony, it’s an act of love, for someone to come here seeking a better life for his family.”

An “act of love” !!! Yes it is.

Jeb Bush also said last year, that undocumented immigrants are, because of their young demographic, a boon to the economy AND help rescue Social security. Truth to power…

^ truth to power : Jeb Bush gets it

All of that should be as obvious as the sun shining in your face. Everry immigrant is a consumer, consumer spending is two-thords of the entire economy; immirants are the most basic economic growth fact. Immigranys also bring cultutal diversity, new idea, new ways of doing things. Far more successful businesses are started by immigrants than their percentage of the entire population.

President Obama says he wnats to grow the economy but that repiublocan obstriction prevebts it. Republican obstruction there is, plenty, including on immigration reform legislation. But nobody is obstructing the President from directing the Justice department.

It ain’t a pretty operation. Immigrants are taken into custody, jailed, often without even basic rights that all people have, not just citizens. They are held in custody for long periods of time as cases drag on and on. Evidently the 5th Amendment’/s guarantee of speedy trail doesn’t apply. That’s only for citizens.

Here in Massachusetts, three immigrant initiatives are on the table : (1) giving undocumented immigrants drivers’ licenses; (2) providing their children with in-state tuition; and (3) passing the Trust Act, by which the state would opt out of the Justice Department’s deportation actions. the first is a public safety measure. The second, simple fairness. the third is more controversial — nullification of Federal law is something one expects from gun people, not snsible policy makers — but it sends a message of what kind of America we are and want to be.

And make no mistake. If Jeb Bush riuns for President in 21016 and sticks to his powerful and, to my mind, irrefutable advocacy for 11,000,000 future Americans as he runs, he will be a candidate well worth voting for. His words shame President Obama’s on immigration. How can the President not understand ?

—- Mike Freedberg / Here and Sphere