Obama Proposes 'Amnesty-Lite' By Executive Order

Hispanic youth

In what critics are calling a Friday in-your-face, and shameless-political-pandering, President Barack Obama's new Immigration policy has seemingly backed Gov. Mitt Romney into a corner.

The GOP nominee––whose blunt statements on immigration during the contentious 2012 Republican primary helped earn him the label of being anti-immigration––can't afford to cede the Latino and Hispanic vote to Obama this Fall... if he plans to win the White House.   

Romney, who earlier in the year gave a Tampa audience a peek into what his immigration stance would be during a GOP debate when he said: 

“The answer is self-deportation, which is [where] people decide they can do better by going home because they can’t find work here, because they don't have legal documentation to allow them to work here.  [But] we’re not going to round them up.”

Contrasted to Obama's new immigration policy, which the President outlined during a surprise press conference, where he said that younger illegal immigrants who came to the country before they turned 16, but who are under 30 now, and have stayed out of trouble, have a high school education or served in the military can receive a two year work permit that can be renewed indefinitely.  

The President's new amnesty-like executive order is strikingly resemblant to the one proposed by Senator Marco Rubio (who is reportedly on Romney's short-list for the Vice Presidential slot) and puts the GOP hopeful in quite a political pickle.   

Appearing undaunted by the President's actions, Romney's campaign staff issued the following counter statement in an attempt to rebuff the President's new position: 
 

“I believe the status of young people who come here through no fault of their own is an important matter to be considered and should be solved on a long-term basis, so they know what their future would be in this country. I think the action that the president took today makes it more difficult to reach that long-term solution because an executive order is, of course, just a short-term matter – it can be reversed by subsequent presidents. I’d like to see legislation that deals with this issue, and I happen to agree with Marco Rubio as he looked at this issue. He said that this is an important matter, that we have to find a long-term solution, but that the president’s action makes reaching a long-term solution more difficult. If I’m president, we’ll do our very best to have that kind of long-term solution that provides certainty and clarity for the people who come into this country through no fault of their own by virtue of the action of their parents.”  Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/mitt-romney-ignore-obama-new-immigration-policy-2012-6#ixzz1xthfW1CC

Pass the popcorn and the goji berries.  It's about to get real hot around here....