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Weekly Immigration Wire: Healthcare and the Undocumented

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Note: This is a weekly feature by Nezua, TMC MediaWire Blogger

On Monday, President Obama met with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Mexican President Felipe Calderón. Following the meeting, Obama made it clear that he doesn’t expect immigration reform to pass until 2010, as the Washington Independent reports:

Even if legislation is drafted this year, healthcare reform demands attention first. Some say the two issues are too connected to be separated, although there is no denying that the healthcare debate has reached a fever pitch.

Right-Wing pundits are polluting constructive dialogue about healtcare reform, many times citing immigration as mark against it. Protestors are violently disrupting town hall meetings in an attempt to scuttle the approaching legislation and cripple the president’s agenda. Their aggression and confusion indicate that the healthcare and immigration debates are intertwined, as the Colorado Independent reports. Unfortunately, immigrants continue to be scapegoated for nearly every social ill that arises.

Even Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., misses the larger point by arguing that the undocumented should not be insured:

A healthier nation is cheaper for everyone in the long run, and simply more humane.