Obama faces immigration plans row
April 9, 2009 by Webmaster · Leave a Comment
Barack Obama plans to grant citizenship to millions of illegal immigrants in an overhaul of US immigration policy, trying to succeed where George Bush failed, according to a report today.
The US president will broach the contentious issue next month, bringing congressional Democrats and Republicans together over the summer to discuss possible legislation for the autumn, the New York Times reported.
Obama will present his drive as “policy reform that controls immigration and makes it an orderly system”, the paper quoted Cecilia Munoz, deputy assistant to the president and director of intergovernmental affairs in the White House, as saying. Obama has identified energy and healthcare reform as his legislative priorities.
The timetable for immigration reform backs pledges made to Hispanic groups in the presidential campaign that immigration reform, including a plan to make legal status possible for an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants, would be a priority in his first year. Hispanic voters turned out strongly for Obama at the election.
As a senator, Obama backed immigration reform proposed by George Bush that sought tougher border controls and a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. Republicans, however, refused to back Bush and killed the plan in 2007.
Any plan to afford eventual citizenship to illegal immigrants – especially at a time of high unemployment – can expect loud opposition from Republicans and some Democrats, backed by trade unions.
Roy Beck, executive director of NumbersUSA, a group that wants to cut immigration, told the New York Times: “It just doesn’t seem rational that any political leader would say, ‘Let’s give millions of foreign workers permanent access to US jobs when we have millions of Americans looking for jobs.’”
Beck predicted that Obama would face “an explosion” if he went ahead this year.
Administration officials said Obama’s plan would not add new workers to the US workforce but serves only to recognise the millions of illegal immigrants already working there.
Obama’s aunt asylum case to be heard on Feb 04,2010
April 1, 2009 by Webmaster · Leave a Comment
President Barack Obama’s aunt will remain in the US as an illegal immigrant until at least next year as she awaits a chance to make her case before an immigration judge in her attempt for asylum from her native Kenya.
Zeituni Onyango had an initial appearance in a US Immigration Court in Boston yesterday. At the brief hearing, a judge set her case to be heard on Feb 4, 2010.
Mrs Onyango, who is the half sister of the President’s late father, was ordered to be deported in 2004 but has continued to live in public housing in Boston.
Her claim to remain in the US is likely to centre on the argument that her safety would be in danger in Kenya, either because of political violence or her new found celebrity.
Mrs Onyango, 56, wore a curly red wig and said nothing as she was led away from court with federal protection. Her hearing was closed to the media at the request of her attorney.
Mr Obama has said he did not know his aunt was living in the US illegally. The White House has made clear the President is staying out of the case and believes the appropriate laws should be followed.
Nonetheless his aunt has put the President in a tough position both personally and politically. Mrs Onyango’s request is being reconsidered under a little-used provision in US immigration rules that allows denied asylum claims to be reheard if applicants can show that something has changed to make them eligible.
Kenya has been fractured by violence in recent years. In 2008, more than 1,000 people were killed following a disputed presidential poll, which saw a Luo candidate, Raila Odinga, declared the loser to President Mwai Kibaki, a Kikuyu, the largest tribe in Kenya.
Since Kenya gained independence from Britain in 1963, periodic tensions have arisen among the Luos – Onyango’s tribe – and some of Kenya’s other tribes, including the Kikuyus. The United States however views Kenya as fairly stable.
Source:The Daily Telegraph(01/04/09)
President Obama leads US drive to topple Mugabe
January 28, 2009 by Webmaster · Leave a Comment
President Obama wants a fresh approach to toppling Robert Mugabe and is discussing with aides an unprecedented, US-led diplomatic push to get tough new UN sanctions imposed against the Zimbabwe regime, The Times has learned.
During talks Mr Obama has had with his top Africa advisers in recent weeks, the central idea they focused on was taking the issue of Zimbabwe before the UN Security Council, but for the first time to combine such a move with an intense diplomatic effort to persuade Russia and China not to block the initiative.
According to a senior aide present at the discussions, the goal of taking the issue of Zimbabwe to the Security Council would be to pass a series of “strong” sanctions, including a ban on arms sales and foreign investment. They also want to expand significantly the number of ruling Zanu-PF party officials subject to sanctions.
Last July, after Mr Mugabe was accused of rigging the elections to stay in power, China and Russia, who have significant financial interests in Zimbabwe, vetoed moves to impose UN sanctions. Mr Obama and his aides believe that, with the growing international outcry over conditions there and the devastating loss of life from the cholera outbreak, Beijing and Moscow can now be persuaded at the very least to abstain when the issue of sanctions comes to another vote.
“It is predicated on China and Russia going along and this Administration will certainly undertake a new round of constructive diplomacy with Russia and China on a whole range of options,” the aide told The Times. “It will depend on an arc of Obama diplomacy in the coming months.”
Pressure on China and Russia will also be coordinated with Britain and France at the UN. “To get even an abstention would be a tremendous victory,” the aide said.
A key figure in any new approach will be Susan Rice, Mr Obama’s UN ambassador, who was Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs in the Clinton administration and is a Zimbabwe expert.
“Susan is extremely aware of what is going on in Zimbabwe and she feels very strongly that there is a tremendous miscarriage of justice in that country and that it has to end,” the aide said. “Once she has her feet on the ground she is going to turn her attention to this issue.”
During her Senate confirmation hearings earlier this month, Dr Rice said that the US would take a leading role at the UN in tackling the “thorny challenges of peacekeeping in the context of Darfur and Congo and the autocracy in the context of Zimbabwe”.
Mr Obama and Dr Rice are also understood to be anxious that Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, does not agree to a power-sharing deal with Mr Mugabe that has been under negotiation for weeks.
They and other Western diplomats were encouraged by the collapse of talks yesterday that regional leaders had convened to make progress on the main issues blocking the formation of a unity government. Mr Tsvangirai was offered the option of sharing with Mr Mugabe, but the opposition leader refused to accept because he was not given control over the Zimbabwean police – the main tool of oppression in the country.
Leaders of the MDC reacted angrily to claims by southern African mediators that an agreement had been brokered to form a unity government by the middle of next month. They accused the Southern African Development Community (SADC) of trying to railroad them into a deal that kept the main levers of power in Mr Mugabe’s hands.
The US and Britain are anxious that Mr Tsvangirai does not weaken and sign up to a power-sharing deal because the failure to reach an accord helps clear the way to take the issue back to the UN. Zimbabwe will again be discussed at the African Union’s annual summit this week, in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, but little progress is expected to be made.
“We have leverage over Russia and we are working on China,” one diplomat told The Times. “If SADC talks fail, then the African Union fails, then the deal is dead in the water and the way is clear to take the issue back to the Security Council.”
Significantly South Africa, which is viewed by Western diplomats as an “enabler” of Mr Mugabe and unwilling to take him on, has stepped down as one of the Security Council’s non-permanent members and can no longer lobby China and Russia for an alternative approach, which it has done in the past.
Article first published in The Times 28 January 2009.
