For: Maribel Hastings (*)
Last Wednesday, the 4th of November there was fulfilled a year of the historical election that turned Barack Obama into the first citizen of African American origin in the history of the United States in being an elect president of the country. Although it will not be up the next January 20, 2010 that Obama will fulfill his first year in the presidency.
In the last almost ten months, Obama has faced the challenges of a severe economic crisis that scarcely is giving tints of light improvement in some factors, although the national unemployment rate already is about 10 %. There are two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and another political war in the Congress with the debate of the reform of health, one of the promises of campaign of Obama that has consumed the legislative agenda this year.
On November 4, 2008 I was in Chicago, Illinois, covering with my companion of that time Pilar Marrero, the electoral day for the newspaper Opinion.
I remember the enthusiasm, the sense of which everything was possible and the rejoicing of the thousands that they packed Grant Park of this city to see and to listen to the candidate of the "change", which it swept with the vote of young people, independent and minorities like the Latin Americans, even to win in the states of republican tendency.
Obama declared then that “if someone was doubting that the United States is a place where any thing is possible, this night it is his answer … This night, therefore we have done in this date, in this election, in this moment definitorio, the change has come to the United States”.
But the route since then has been difficult for Obama and for those who hope that there should become true the promises that it formulated during the campaign, between them the migratory reform.
In the last weeks one has listened to Obama to say that “the change is difficult” and that “the change does not happen overnight”. Not at all like the reality of the presidency.
In honor to the truth, the economic crisis and the wars they were already in progress when Obama gained the election and later when it assumed the reins of the country.
The unemployment valuation in the year 2001, when George W. Bush came to the power, it was only 4 %. When it went out of the White House in 2008 it was almost 8 % and now it is almost 10 %. Bush inherited the surplus presupuestal from Bill Clinton, but it left to Obama a 1.2 trillions deficit (trillions) of dollars, which only has been on the increase. |
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The White House makes sure that the plan of economic stimulus of Obama has helped to create or save up to 650 thousand jobs.
At the same time, Obama is bottled in the strategic changes of the wars, especially that of Afghanistan, where he prepares to decide what role the USA will play in the conflict of eight years. It promised to extract the troops of Iraq and it seems that it will happen, but not in the numbers and in the time anticipated.
But the ambitious domestic agenda is not inherited. That one yes him belongs to Obama, with all his wise moves or errors of strategy and at the moment, has been monopolized by the bloody battle for the health reform that Obama has done keystone of his presidency. In the middle of the stumbles there are certain advances and although one speaks about period nobody knows with certainty if certainly the process will be able to be completed before it concludes this year, or if in effect the awaited sanitary reform will be achieved.
This has provoked debts in other reforms, like those of energy and immigration.
Obama promised to achieve a migratory reform in the first year of his presidency. There is no migratory reform yet, but the first year of his presidency has not been fulfilled either.
But in these last months we have seen a rise of migratory measurements centred on the application of laws and a few cosmetic changes to other programs that have not solved the migratory crisis and in the process they have untied unease between the immigrant community.
We will see if for January 20, 2010 the legislative process is already in march to achieve this reform, as also it has been promised.
In the migratory front the change certainly has not been overnight, and it is still for see.
(*) Senior Advisor de Americás Voice. www.maribelhastings.com
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