She’s American in ways that matter most — let her stay

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Updated: July 7, 2011 2:16AM

President Barack Obama should use his executive power to end the deportation of young people who are eligible for the Dream Act and the children and spouses of U.S. citizens. In doing so, he would demonstrate compassion for hardworking families who deserve a better deal.

The president also should order the federal “Secure Communities” program to return to its original mission of deporting only murderers, rapists and drug dealers.

But chances are Obama won’t do any of that for fear of becoming an easy target for Republicans on an issue that has polarized the country.

Secure Communities, the controversial dragnet of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, was created for the express purpose of deporting undocumented immigrants found guilty of serious crimes. In Illinois, however, 32 percent of immigrants subjected to the program’s deportation proceedings have never been convicted of a crime. And nationally, 28 percent had no criminal record.

Illinois, New York and Massachusetts, troubled by this, recently dropped out of the program.

For all his talk about the need to fix a broken immigration system, Obama appears more interested in looking like a hawk and will continue to blame Congress for inaction.

Obama and his advisers fail to appreciate the impact deportations have had on Latino voters, who are growing in number. The Obama administration is deporting a record 400,000 undocumented immigrants each year, more than 1,000 a day. And Latino voters know — in many cases personally — that these on-going deportations wreak havoc on families and communities.

A recent poll revealed that immigration is a top issue among Latino voters and that they are well aware of the harsh situation for undocumented immigrants in many parts of the country. A majority of Latino voters said they know someone who is undocumented, and one-fourth claimed they know a person or a family member who is facing deportation or has been deported.

And though they continue to support Obama, Latino voters are beginning to blame him for failing to deliver on immigration reform.

Consider the case of U.S. citizen and Army Spec. Hector Nunez, his wife, Rosa, and their 1-year-old son, Jason. Rosa Nunez came to Chicago with her family — admittedly illegally — when she was a child. Some of her siblings have since become citizens or legal residents, but she has not. Rosa Nunez and her husband have been married for almost six years.

A year ago, Hector Nunez learned that he was going to be deployed to Afghanistan. Following the advice of a lawyer, the couple traveled to Ciudad Juarez for an interview at the U.S. Consulate to resolve his wife’s legal status. But that backfired. She was barred for 10 years from the country she has called home most of her life.

He took the problem to Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Chicago), who in December obtained a one-year humanitarian visa for Rosa Nunez. But what will happen to his wife, he wonders, when that year is up?

On Thursday, the couple and their son attended a rally in Chicago to urge Obama to stop deportations of non-criminal immigrants.

“Every case in different,” Hector Nunez told me. “But there are many people being deported that don’t harm our country.”

And those sensible words came from a soldier willing to put his life on the line for our country.

Obama could use his executive powers to end the deportation of people such as Rosa Nunez — an American in all the ways that should matter most, married to an American soldier.

Latino voters — and all fair-minded Americans — are watching.