Press TV
06 Mar 2010
US President Barack Obama plans to focus on immigration matters next week by meeting at the White House with two senators crafting a bill on the issue.
According to The White House spokesman Nicholas Shapiro, on Monday the US president will meet with Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York.
Shapiro said on Friday that the president "looking forward to hearing more about their efforts toward producing a bipartisan bill."
Obama started focusing on the issue last year; however, this meeting will be the first he has had with Schumer and Graham on the proposal they are developing ever since.
Immigrants and their advocates have been growing frustrated by Obama's failure to deliver on his campaign promise to address the issue in his first year of presidency.
Several community groups planned to vent some of that frustration in a news conference on Monday in Washington and are also trying to gather thousands of people for a March 21 demonstration in Washington
The alien population unlawfully remaining in the US is estimated to be about 11 million people, down from a historic peak of 12.5 million people in 2007.
According to a Pew Hispanic Center report, in 2005, 57% of illegal immigrants were from Mexico, 24% were from other Latin American countries, primarily from Central America, 9% were from Asia, 6% were from Europe, and 4% were from the rest of the world.
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