On immigration, though, most Republican candidates don’t seem to be heeding the lessons of 2012, when Mitt Romney was widely condemned for calling for undocumented immigrants to self-deport.
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“Don’t boo… vote. They can’t hear the boos… they can hear your vote”, he said.
He continued, “Leadership is not fanning the flames of intolerance and then acting all surprised when a fire breaks out”.
“I believe that people who come here illegally should have to pay a fine, and pay their fair share of taxes, and get registered, and get right with the law and go to the back of the line before they earn citizenship”, Obama said.
“We can’t just sit on the sidelines hoping that things will get better”, Sanchez said.
During Clinton’s brief introduction of chef José Andrés, Clinton was heckled by a young person claiming affiliation with activist group United We Dream before he was forcibly removed.
“It’s a problem when a leading Republican candidate for president says that immigrants from Mexico are rapists and drug dealers”, Clinton said, referencing comments that Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump made last summer. He promised to continue fighting for the sweeping deportation relief he announced last November, which has been blocked by courts.
A statement from United We Dream following the incident said that the group was protesting Clinton taking campaign donations from private prisons, adding that half of detained immigrants are placed in private prisons.
President Barack Obama speaks at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institutes (CHCI) 38th Anniversary awards gala in Washington, Thursday, October 8, 2015.
Obama did not mention any candidate by name in his address to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute, but he did denounce those in the Republican Party who are trying to reverse his efforts on immigration reform.
While immigration reform is not going to happen in the current Congress, the issue will help define the 2016 elections.
As the audience booed, the president interrupted them.
“We need people who will stand up to this ugly rhetoric and extreme thinking, who will say with our words and our actions, basta, enough”.
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A few Republican presidential hopefuls, including Trump and Texas Senator Ted Cruz, say they want to revoke so-called “birthright citizenship”, which automatically grants citizenship to anyone born in the US, including the children of undocumented immigrants.
