The immigration system in the United States continues equally of cracked that when the electoral process began, our columnist assures.

We listen to it straight of mouth of the president. Our country crosses his most difficult economic moment. Nevertheless, in his first message to the nation in a joint meeting of the Congress, he said: "We will reconstruct, we will recover”.

It was important for Obama to try to restore the confidence in our economy and promote his bundle of economic stimulus. But in the summary of the president on the evil that they affect to the country, both at domestic and external level, the topic that evidently was absent was that of immigration.

It is this delicate topic that simply does not disappear. A problem difficult to face, especially when the country is divided between those who wanted to see the immigrants directed towards the legalization and those who prefer that all the undocumented immigrants are arrested and deported.

The true thing is that the immigration system in the United States continues equally of cracked that when the electoral process began. In a moment it seemed as if it would be “the topic of campaign” that would decide the election of 2008. But that was until the economy reflected a dramatic descent.

The position of the president Obama on immigration has been quite consistent. He affirmative vote of the construction of a wall that would provide safety on the border, but also it has supported and keeps on supporting the idea of a wide migratory reform. Now when the new administration has taken possession, we receive contradictory signs as for how the government will proceed on the subject of immigration.

In a recent interview with the popular presenter of radio in Spanish Eduardo Sotelo, the "Piolín", Obama repeated his commitment to form a group of work that helps to establish an agenda for a migratory reform. “We will begin for trying to improve the current system so that the persons who want to become citizens can do it. That is more economic, more rapid and that should facilitate the patronage to members of the family”, he affirmed.

But a few days after this interview, immigration agents did the first raid that has been realized in a work place since Obama assumed the charge. According to reports, the agents of the Service of Immigration, HOIST, they took an engines factory as an assault in Bellingham, Washington, and arrested dozens of persons, the majority Mexican and Central American, under suspicions that they are in the country illegally. The group pro immigrant Americas Voice qualified the raid of “weakly with the vision of the president about the migratory reform”.

Repeatedly Obama has indicated how inhuman it is to separate the families. During his acceptance speech in the Democratic National Convention Obama it supported: "I do not meet anybody who benefits when a mother is separated from his small son”. The language in the platform of the party with regard to the immigration raids says: "It is a problem when we only impose our laws against the immigrants in raids that are ineffective, they separate the families and leave persons retained without access adapted to adviser Ì to legal”.
“ The raids of immigration that concentrate on undocumented workpeople who are not criminal will not arrange our injured immigration system they nor do surer to our country either”, said America's Voice in a press release shortly after the raid in Bellingham.

On February 13, the Department of Internal Safety expressed a report saying that of more than 2 million immigrants who were deported between 1998 and 2007, approximately 100.000 were children's parents that are citizens of the United States. The Service of Immigration checks now if to establish procedures to determine if the immigrants retained in raids have 18-year-old younger sons who are American citizens.

The president Obama has accentuated the importance of fighting with the economy and the mortgage crisis before treating the migratory topic, and that is understandable. He has avoided to give an executive order that puts a moratorium to the raids. But it is a time of that the actions of the administration are more according to his good intentions towards immigrants in our country and with his commitment to repair our injured immigration system.

(c) 2008 by Maria Helen Salinas.