The president this morning spoke at a Hispanic prayer breakfast and reiterated his support for amnesty, but again offered no timeline. One interesting twist is that he endorsed the bogus "touchback" gimmick that was floated during the last round of the amnesty debate, wherein illegal aliens would go home to apply for amnesty, have lunch, then come back legally, thus "rebooting" their status. As the L.A. Times writes:
On the substance, Obama backed a policy including a path for citizenship for those undocumented workers in the United States. He also said he supported a so-called touch-back provision so that illegal immigrants would return to their home countries and take their turn at the end of the line of those seeking to come to the United States.
The touch-back is designed so that immigrants now in the United States do not get preference over those who waited to emigrate. It is one of the more controversial parts of immigration reform, opposed by many in the Latino community.
The point of the gimmick is to show that the illegal aliens are going to "the end of the line" when, in fact, the only way this could be even remotely true would be if the illegal aliens actually moved back home and their amnesty applications could somehow be turned down before they returned — needless to say, none of the touchback proposals were like that. Here's an NRO editorial from 2007 blasting one of the iterations of the phony touchback idea.
If you enjoyed this blog, check out Another “No Amnesty” Amnesty.