Editorial: A Day Not To Forget

Yesterday, May 19, was supposed to be a memorable date for millions of undocumented immigrants that would have been allowed to remain in the country in which their children were born and raised. That’s not the case. However, we should not forget that date, or at least the politicians who are blocking a normalization in the lives of those parents.

This really didn’t have to be that way.

Ideally, we would have had a comprehensive migratory reform similar to the one approved by the Senate in the past legislative session. This would have taken into account the regularization of some categories of undocumented people, among other aspects, but in the House of Representatives prevailed the animosity towards those immigrants of a powerful GOP sector. Thus, not only they rejected allowing a vote on the Senate bill, they also took every opportunity to try to remove the protection from deportation of Dreamers, the people without papers who were brought to the U.S. as children by their parents.

The only alternative and hope left for those long-term immigrants that have built their lives in the U.S. was the DAPA executive order that was going to protect them from deportation. This put Republicans on a war footing, as they concealed their antagonism towards the undocumented under their favorite argument against President Obama -also used in such areas as the environment: that he is abusing his constitutional power.

The opposition to the executive orders and the promise to eliminate them has now passed on to the Republican presidential primaries. Everybody, from the most moderate candidates like Jeb Bush (who has not yet made an announcement) to the most extreme like Rick Santorum and Scott Walker, declare the elimination of the executive orders a priority. All of them applauded when a Texas judge froze the executive orders, thus preventing the DAPA register from beginning yesterday.

A signal of political maturity for the Latino voter would be to pay more attention to what the candidates say to other people, instead of when they sweet-talk to him. The message of removing protection from deportation resonates in the anti immigrant conservative base, but it can also be heard clearly in the Latino community. It’s a good thing to remember when the time to vote comes.