President Barack Obama's executive immigration action last week drew criticism from all sides of the political spectrum, including Hispanics and organizations whose goal is to help immigrants, like The LIBRE Initiative.
The group pens itself as a non-partisan grassroots organization that "advances the principles and values or economic freedom to empower the U.S. Hispanic community so that it can thrive and contribute to a more prosperous America."
Breitbart recently interviewed the LIBRE spokesperson, Rachel Campos-Duffy, who is the Latina wife of Republican Congressman Sean Duffy, and the number of concerns within the hispanic community over the new immigration amnesty became quite apparent.
"The concern that we have at LIBRE is, because it's a temporary fix, it's only as good as long as this president is president, and can be overturned by a court, or by another president," she told Breitbart. "As Hispanics, we want immigration reform, but we want it done right."
She characterized immigration as a "very complex, arcane issue" that the president could not expect to fix "with a wave of [the] pen."
Referring to a recent Wall Street Journal/NBC poll that found only 43 percent of Hispanics agreed with Obama taking executive actions, Campos-Duffy told Breitbart bluntly, it's "not a very high number when you think about how many want immigration reform."
Due to the uncertainty of long-term amnesty, she worries the plan could coax "people out of the shadows, potentially exposing them to deportation" if their applications were rejected or if there was a change in policy.
When a plan like this is hastily pushed through, Campos-Duffy claims it hurts the trust between parties and "kills the chance of finding a compromise."
"That's what happens when you do these kind of exec actions instead of hammering out the details through the legislative process," said Campos-Duffy. "Everything [Obama has] done, ramming this through, chips away at the trust between the parties and makes it less likely that we'll get the immigration reform we all want: something real, something durable."
Perhaps most importantly to Campos-Duffy and the LIBRE organization, though, is the potential unconstitutionality of the executive action.
"Part of what makes America great isn't just the opportunity, but where the opportunity comes from -- the rule of law and our Constitution...[Obama's plan] seems really counter-intuitive to me," said Campos-Duffy. "It risks destroying what makes this country great and why they want to come here."
"We want to remind conservatives that it's important to stick to the facts, stick the Constitution, and remind [Hispanics] what they really wanted," said Campos-Duffy, who emphasized that "no one knows better than Hispanics what it's like to live in a country that doesn't have the rule of law."
"I am very empathetic [to the immigrants' positions]. I'm the granddaughter of immigrants and I know why they want to come here...I get it, I thank God my grandparents decided to come here from Mexico."
"It's important that we don't undermine why they want to come...if we undermine the Constitution, we're undermining the very reason why people want to come to this country."
