Obama on Immigration

By and large, I really liked and Obama's speech about immigration (this is about the text, not delivery--I read it, not watched it).

However, his vague and shifting use of "politics" annoyed me: "We have to put the politics aside." I think that there he means we need to stop taking ideological entrenched position and engage in politics together? And on The Dream Act not passing in the Senate: "It was a tremendous disappointment to get so close and then see politics get in the way." I'm not sure why The Dream Act didn't pass, but I'm pretty sure politics would have been the cause of either it passing or not passing. Politics is sort of the whole business of what they do in the government (or at least part of it). How is he just using this as a disparaging word?

Also, it interests me that Obama addresses the family and keeping families together as a big concern of immigration policy: "Our laws should respect families following the rules – reuniting them more quickly instead of splitting them apart. Today, the immigration system not only tolerates those who break the rules, it punishes the folks who follow the rules. While applicants wait for approval, for example, they're often forbidden from visiting the United States. Even husbands and wives may have to spend years apart. Parents can't see their children. I don't believe the United States of America should be in the business of separating families. That's not right. That's not who we are. " I don't read all of Obama's speeches, by any means, but this isn't something that I've heard him bring up much in the past. It's clever because conservatives can't complain about pro-family moves. When I read this section of the speech, though, it brought to my mind is contemporary shifts in immigration policy away from enforcing deportation of spouses in homosexual couples. Obama certainly doesn't mention that and perhaps it wasn't in his mind at all.