First Communista Moochelle Obama Gives Head For Votes At (LA RAZA) Major Latino Conference

[Rupert]

First Lady Michelle Obama may wade into the hot waters of
immigration when she delivers the keynote speech at the annual
conference of the National Council of La Raza on Tuesday.

Immigration is one of President Barack Obama's top second-term
priorities, but one that at least for the time being, seems
stuck.

While Michelle Obama's pet issue during the first term was
fitness, the first lady did occasionally address immigration
matters in media interviews.

In a 2012 interview with national Spanish-language network
Univision, she downplayed the Obama administration’s record
number of deportations when the reporter raised the subject.

“There is nothing more critical than keeping families together
and that is why Barack has been fighting so hard for
comprehensive immigration reform,” she told the network “For the
sheer fact that we cannot continue to let families be broken
apart. That is at the heart of the success of any community --
thriving families being able to stay together.”

And in 2011, also in an interview with Univision, she urged
Latinos to help build momentum for immigration reform – which
would include a path to legal status for undocumented immigrants
– because, she said, her husband could not overhaul the flawed
system by himself.

“It’s got to get through Congress; he can’t do it alone,” she
said.

“He has talked about [immigration] at every State of the Union
address that he’s given, and he pushed hard, I think, as he
said, the greatest disappointment in this last legislative year
is that the DREAM Act didn’t get passed, that immigration got
pushed aside,” she said. “But people have to know that the
president can’t pass immigration reform without the support of
Congress, and we don’t have that.”

In June, the first lady tapped Maria Cristina González Noguera,
known as “MC,” and who was global vice president of Estée
Lauder, to be her communications director.

The Senate in late June passed a bipartisan immigration reform
bill that tightens enforcement, expands visas for foreign
workers and provides a path to legal status for many of the
nation’s estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants. Now it’s
the House’s turn to work on a bill, and Republicans in that
chamber have said they are determined not to rubber-stamp the
Senate’s measure.

Some conservatives in the House, where Republicans have a
majority, opposed giving undocumented immigrants a path to legal
status, saying that would be rewarding lawbreakers.

President Obama has insisted that any measure that is sent to
his desk for his signature must include a path to legal status.

In the president’s second term, Michelle Obama has shifted her
social-issues emphasis to kids and gun violence after spending
four years stressing better physical fitness for the young.

A meeting with high school students from a poor, gang-infested
neighborhood in Chicago, her hometown, led Mrs. Obama to put a
new spin on the stalled legislative debate over whether to ban
firearms or impose new background checks on people who want to
buy guns.

A mother to a teen and a tween, Mrs. Obama argued that the
debate also is about the country's obligation to help kids like
these grow up and become adults. Several of the school's current
and former students were killed by gunfire within the past year.

One of the president’s highest-ranking Latinos in his
administration is Cecilia Munoz, a former vice president of
National Council of La Raza, a Latino advocacy group.

It is unclear whether Mrs. Obama will continue to speak about
gun violence or immigration after the address on Tuesday to
NLCR. The speech is one of her few remaining public events
before she takes her traditional month off in August. But her
words and actions on the gun issue have drawn notice.

She recently said that first ladies, more than presidents, "get
to work on what we're passionate about."

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