Conner Dwinell of the College Conservative examines Obama’s immigration speech in a new post and gives it low marks.

Obama’s Immigration Speech: A Repeat of Failure

Last Monday, President Obama gave a speech on immigration reform from the Rose Garden to address the rapid increase of illegal immigrant children crossing the border into the United States. This increase is a direct result of the recent promises of amnesty coming from the White House.  The president’s speech, however, failed to put forward any new or constructive ideas for moving forward.

Relying on one of his tried and true tactics, the president blamed Republicans in Congress for their obstruction of the immigration reform bill drafted last year, claiming that he had “held off on pressuring [Congress] for a long time to give Speaker Boehner the space he needed to get his fellow Republicans on board.”  It’s no surprise that the president claims it isn’t his fault.  Has anything been? By this point, however, it should be obvious that the biggest concern that Republicans in Congress have is the perceived lack of sincerity in the enforcement of border security.  It’s not just “politics, plain and simple,” as the president asserts.

As a policymaker, the sensible solution would be to work with John Boehner and other Republicans and agree upon a specific policy for securing the border. Ideally, that policy would hold the president accountable if it’s not enacted, and Obama could (among other things) take the “it will get done and if it doesn’t, its on me” approach.  But there’s too much on the line for the president to do that: the perceived “tolerance” behind the amnesty policy and the entire Obama administration framework, the possibility that inaction could come back to him, and worst of all, the potential black mark of *gasp* cooperating with the Republicans.  Instead, it was much easier to set up Congress to fail.