Univision snags Obama interview

Univision snags Obama interview
By: Josh Gerstein
February 13, 2009 09:02 PM EST

President Obama is vowing to call attention to immigration issues in his first months in office, but he is stopping short of promising to introduce immigration reform legislation anytime soon.

In a 10-minute interview Thursday with Univision’s Spanish-language radio show, El Pistolero, Obama was asked if he would act on immigration reform within three months.

“What I’ve said is that, in the first 90 days, I want to get a group of members of Congress who are interested in the issue, employers, workers, immigrants rights groups, I want to get them around the table to start moving forward on the agenda,” Obama said. “There are a lot of things that we can do to help prepare for comprehensive immigration reform. For example, one thing that we can do right away is to start making it easier for people who are applying for legal immigration status to apply and do so in a way that is not so expensive for them — where we’re eliminating some of these backlogs so families can reunify more quickly.”

Obama called immigration reform “a top priority for the country,” but he was vague about when he might introduce any legislation on the subject.

Asked if he would support a moratorium on workplace immigrations raids that Latino groups have complained often separate mothers from children, Obama was sympathetic but noncommittal, and said it was the kind of issue he’d like to have reviewed by the study group he plans to set up. “Let’s take into account some of the strains that are being placed on families that are basically here due to the lack of jobs in Mexico,” he said. “Our immigration system is broken and we need to fix it.”

The president also said Hispanics were being particularly hard hit by the current recession. “The effects of this economy on people losing their jobs, losing their homes is so serious and it’s especially serious for Latinos. We’ve actually seen that Latinos are being affected worse than a lot of other communities because many people were involved in construction,” he said.

At another point in the interview, Obama said Mexican President Felipe Calderon, whom he met during the transition, “seems like an excellent person.” Obama said he hoped to travel to Mexico “in the near future,” but he did not give a date.

Obama’s chat with El Pistolero was the president’s first known radio interview since the Inauguration. As the interview wrapped up with a “gracias” from the host, Obama responded with a “muchas gracias” of his own.