Obama tells Reporter: If I Win, It'll Be Because GOP 'Alienated' Latinos
/In an interview with the Des Moines Register, which was originally conducted off the record but made public Wednesday, President Obama said if he's reelected it'll be because the GOP has ignored Latinos.
Des Moines Register editors accepted the interview with the President on the condition that it would be off the record, but once the interview was done the editors published a story urging the Obama campaign to release transcripts of the interview. On Wednesday the Obama campaign obliged.
Below is an except from Obama's interview with the DesMoinesRegister.com:
The second thing I'm confident we'll get done next year is immigration reform. And since this is off the record, I will just be very blunt. Should I win a second term, a big reason I will win a second term is because the Republican nominee and the Republican Party have so alienated the fastest-growing demographic group in the country, the Latino community. And this is a relatively new phenomenon. George Bush and Karl Rove were smart enough to understand the changing nature of America. And so I am fairly confident that they're going to have a deep interest in getting that done. And I want to get it done because it's the right thing to do and I've cared about this ever since I ran back in 2008.
"There's a difference between Latinos voting for you because the other party has so alienated them and Latinos voting for you because they enthusiastically support your policies and agenda and President Obama may be banking too much on the former and not paying enough attention to the latter," said Colorlines.com reporter Julianne Hing.
The Obama administration set a new record for deportations in 2011, removing nearly 400,000 undocumented immigrants. The vast majority have no criminal record whatsoever.
