President Obama and Univision anchor Jorge Ramos engaged in an round of verbal sparring over the President’s record on immigration during a Noticiero Univision interview Tuesday. However, by the end of the interview, the President was back to enlisting Ramos as part of his team, tasking him with “making sure that people [unauthorized immigrants] understand what their opportunities are” as a result of the administration's latest amnesty initiative.
Ramos, an amnesty advocate who begrudges what he considers the tardiness of the President’s executive action on immigration as well as the administration’s previous record of deportations in enforcement of federal immigration law, raised Obama’s hackles when he asked the President “If you always had the legal authority to stop deportations, then why did you deport two million people?”
In short order, the President shot back that Ramos was essentially misrepresenting the matter at hand. “Those like you sometimes, Jorge, who suggest that there are simple, quick answers to these problems,” the President interjected. “I never said that,” Ramos interrupted. “No, yes you do, because that’s how you present it,” insisted the President, gesticulating accusatorially.
“I think when you present it in that way, it does a disservice because it makes the assumption that the political process is one that can easily be moved around depending on the will of one person,” Obama continued.
A few second later, however, Obama was back to buttering up Ramos and calling upon him to do a “good job” as a spokesman for the implementation of the administration’s amnesty program. “The question I have for you, Jorge, because you’re going to have a big voice, is are you going to do a good job, now that we’ve taken these actions, making sure that people understand what their opportunities are.”
The President went on to specify that Ramos’ "job" includes helping “to make sure not only as many people are registered as possible” but that “we lay the groundwork for passing comprehensive immigration reform.”
Ramos, who is an unabashed champion of advocacy journalism, voiced no objection to this presidential commissioning. He and his network have done the administration’s bidding before, and it’s a safe bet that just as they have been doing on an institutional basis in the implementation of Obamacare, they will also do in the implementation of Obama's amnesty.
Below is the transcript of the cited exchange aired during the Dec. 9 edition of Noticiero Univision:
RAMOS: If you always had the legal authority to stop deportations, then why did you deport two million people?
OBAMA: Here’s the fact of the matter. As President of the United States, I am always responsible for problems that aren’t solved right away. I regret millions of people who didn't get health insurance before I passed health insurance and before I implemented it. I regret the fact that there are kids who should have been going to college during my presidency, but because we didn’t get to them fast enough, they gave up on college. The question is are we doing the right thing, and have we consistently tried to move this country in a better direction? And those like you sometimes, Jorge, who suggest that there are simple, quick answers to these problems
RAMOS: I never said that.
OBAMA: No, yes you do, because that’s how you present it, and I think when you present it in that way, it does a disservice because it makes the assumption that the political process is one that can easily be moved around depending on the will of one person, and that’s not how things work. We spent that entire time trying to get a comprehensive immigration reform bill done that would solve the problem for all the people. So right now, by the actions that I’ve taken, I still have five million people who do not have the ability to get registered and be confident that they’re not deported. In fact, what’s going to happen sometime over the next two days, week, month is that there’s going to be some folks who are still caught up in the system because we have to go and train ICE (Immigrations and Customs Enforcement) workers so that they are responding in a different way. And so the question I have for you, Jorge, because you’re going to have a big voice, is are you going to do a good job in, now that we’ve taken these actions, making sure that people understand what their opportunities are, how we can take advantage of it and how we can build to make sure that going forward not only as many people are registered as possible, if you’ve been here for five years, if you have a child who is an American citizen or a legal permanent resident, that you are likely to end up signing up, so that we build up that capacity and we lay the groundwork for passing comprehensive immigration reform.