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WASHINGTON, D.C. — President Barack Obama outlined national and international priorities and their effect on the domestic Hispanic and hemisphere populations in an Aug. 7 round-table press meeting with Hispanic Link News Service and nine other Latino-beat reporters.
Now seven months into his administration, Obama reviewed his priorities to stabilize an economy that, he said, was worse than he expected when he took office. It was on the “brink of catastrophe,” he said, with the gross domestic product (GDP) worse than he had thought, at a 6.4 percent contraction but the decline had moderated to 1 percent at the end of the second quarter.
He recognized that Latinos have been particularly hard hit during this recession and said his administration is creating a “new foundation for future growth.” In that framework, he prioritized education, health care, energy and immigration reform. In particular, he drew attention to a triage of issue areas needing bipartisan attention beginning with health care and a bill likely to be taken up in early September, followed by more needed financial reform.
A couple days later, he made a similar statement in Guadalajara following a weekend summit with Mexico’s President Felipe Calderón and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. He repeated that an immigration reform framework is in preparation consisting of administrative measures, such as the FBI clearing a background-check backlog, greater use of advanced technologies for processing, and ending indiscriminate raids.
Bipartisan meetings will follow in the fall to craft legislation to introduce at the beginning of the new year. Republican buy-in is essential to achieve comprehensive reform, he said, and credited the Bush administration with trying, even though it was unable to rally its own ranks to support reform.
He noted wryly, “There are elements in the Republican Party who think I am an illegal immigrant.” He was referring to the “birthers,” who have questioned Obama’s own birth certificate.
In the freewheeling question and answer session that followed, Obama told Hispanic Link that his Aug. 8-9 trip to Guadalajara, Mexico, would focus on a “host of issues,” saying additional ones might come up with the other North American leaders, Mexico’s President Felipe Calderón and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen
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