WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama vowed on Friday to “do everything I can” to reform America’s broken immigration system.

On Monday, President Obama pledged to use his executive power to make potentially sweeping changes to the US immigration system. And on July 4, which is America’s Independence Day, he invited 25 new immigrants to the White House to take the oath of citizenship.

The decision to push for the reforms without support from the Republicans marks the end of Mr Obama’s year-long effort to take Congress along on the important issue. Since early last year, the Obama administration has been trying to convince Republican lawmakers, who control the House, to enact compromise legislation granting legal status to 11 million illegal immigrants.

The Republicans, who have never been friendly to new immigrants, moved further away from the proposed reforms earlier this summer after House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s surprise primary loss to an anti-immigration candidate.

The lawmakers fear losing support of their mostly conservative voters in the mid-term elections for all 435 seats in the US House of Representatives in November this year.

Not supporting the reforms, however, will further alienate millions of immigrant voters, particularly those from Latin America. In the last two elections, most of them voted for the Democratic Party.

Aware of the Republican dilemma, President Obama chose to ignore the stiff resistance he is facing from a Republican-dominated House to the proposed reforms.

“I’m going to keep doing everything I can to make our immigration system smarter and more efficient,” the president said at the White House naturalisation ceremony.

“America is and always has been a nation of immigrants,” he declared. “Every one of us –- unless we’re Native American –- has an ancestor who was born somewhere else.”

Political analysts in the US interpreted this as a smart political move which may help the Democrats increase their strength in the mid-term elections.

“We shouldn’t be making it harder for the best and the brightest to come here, and create jobs here, and grow our economy here,” President Obama said, while explaining the need for new immigration reforms. “We should be making it easier.”

He said that hard-working men and women should be given the opportunity to come to American, “so we can be stronger and more prosperous and more whole — together.”

President Obama told the audience that 15 of the 25 immigrants who took oath of citizenship at the White House were active duty service members and said they were a vivid reminder that the US had always been a nation for immigrants.

He also vowed to keep pushing for immigration reform despite opposition from House Republicans.

“We’re going to have to fix our immigration system, which is broken, and pass common sense immigration reform,” he said.

Published in Dawn, July 5th, 2014