President Obama got elected with a huge boost from Latino voters. Now some Hispanic leaders are demanding that the president make good on a campaign pledge to take on the politically charged issue of immigration reform.

Tom Tancredo is a former congressman from Colorado.

Tom Tancredo is a former Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Colorado and founder of the Rocky Mountain Foundation.

There are two main political obstacles to a new amnesty bill in this session of Congress.

First, the White House has other priorities despite the whining from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. If President Obama and Rahm Emanuel were all that committed to a new amnesty bill as a top priority, the National Council of La Raza would not be sending out a newsletter alert asking its followers to bombard the White House, Reid and Pelosi with calls and emails demanding action “Ahora!” - which they did yesterday. The fact is, the economy makes any such proposal “DOA” in Congress without a full-court press by the White House - which is not going to happen—and even then it would be a loser.

Second, Senator McCain managed to secure the Republican nomination only after neutralizing the amnesty issue by telling Republicans—“I've got the message: border security must come first.” If he now supports an amnesty bill while the border fence is incomplete and border security is still years away, he will be universally chastised as a fraud.

The bottom line? Let’s build the fence, a true double fence like we have in San Diego, increase Border Patrol manpower to 25,000, and only then have a national debate about what to do with the 20 million illegal aliens already here. A debate without true border security is a farce and a fraud.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Tom Tancredo.

Maria Teresa Petersen is the founding Executive Director of Voto Latino.

Maria Teresa Petersen is the founding Executive Director of Voto Latino, a youth driven, national organization founded for the purpose of creating a unified voice for Latino youth on policy and advocacy issues.

With all the debate about immigration, there is one thing everyone agrees with: we have a national problem and we keep putting off dealing with it. For years our immigration policy has been mañana, mañana, mañana – the famous Spanish expression which means putting it off until another day. During the presidential campaign last year, then Candidate Obama said he would break that cycle, and this week, President Obama began making good on that promise by raising the issue once more.

Will we get comprehensive immigration reform this year? It’s entirely possible we will, and, if not, we will at least make real progress toward legislation for next year. Many say that the economy is a big enough problem for President Obama and he shouldn’t add more to his plate. But immigration is not a side dish. It’s one of the core problems we face and we must deal with it now. As Rahm Emmanuel has said, the White House sees this crisis as an opportunity to address long-neglected national problems like healthcare, social security, and immigration.

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