Washington, DC—The National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) issued the following statement following today’s State of the Union Address by President George W. Bush:

“We appreciate that President Bush recognized that our nation’s failure to fix our broken immigration system is a ‘pressing challenge’ and part of the ‘unfinished business’ facing our country.  We are encouraged that he acknowledged the need for a ‘sensible and humane way’ to address the status of undocumented immigrants in this country, but he must go further. 
The President must demonstrate his leadership by working with Congress to enact fair and comprehensive immigration reform that provides a path to U.S. citizenship for law abiding,
tax-paying newcomers.

The President also stated that our immigration policy should uphold America’s ‘highest ideals.’ Keeping families together is one of those ideals, and any comprehensive immigration reform should strengthen the family reunification provisions in our immigration laws rather than undermine them.  NALEO has adopted principles on comprehensive immigration reform
[click here] that provide a road map to the work that needs to be done on this important national issue; we urge the President and Congress to use them as a guide for making the critical changes that are needed in our immigration policy.

In addition, we believe the President missed an important opportunity to address policies that will help ensure that all of our nation’s newcomers become full participants in our democracy.  The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has announced lengthy naturalization application processing delays that will force more than a million newcomers to defer their dream of U.S. citizenship.  Last fiscal year, 1.4 million legal permanent residents applied for naturalization because they were eager to become full Americans and make their voices heard in the electoral process.  The President, the USCIS and Congress must work together on a plan that ensures that these newcomers become U.S. citizens by July 4, 2008.”