AP: Obama has built a complicated immigration record

[Omaha Steve]

http://apnews.excite.com/article/20140922/us--obama-immigration-5e5367b17d.html

Sep 22, 1:42 PM (ET)

By JIM KUHNHENN

WASHINGTON (AP) — There were about 30, all Mexican nationals desperate to avoid deportations that would separate them from their families. Living in Illinois, they appealed for help from their new U.S. senator, Barack Obama.

He turned them down.

It was one of the first times Obama could have used the power of his office to help defer the removal of immigrants who were in the United States illegally. Eight years later, with his powers magnified as president, such a decision is upon him again, this time with the status of millions of immigrants at stake.


FILE - In this June 30, 2014, file photo, President Barack Obama, accompanied by Vice President Joe Biden, pauses while making a statement about immigration reform, in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington. Obama over time has been embraced and scorned by immigrant advocates who have viewed him as both a champion and an obstacle to their cause. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)


That episode in 2006 represents just one early marker in Obama's complicated history with the politics of immigration. The son of a Kenyan immigrant, Obama has been embraced and scorned by immigrant advocates who have viewed him as both a champion and an obstacle to their cause.

FULL story at link.