President Obama sought to inject himself into the 2016 presidential race Monday, criticizing Republicans on immigration and education on a trip to Iowa, home of the first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses.
At a town-hall meeting at a high school in Des Moines, Mr. Obama didn’t mention GOP front-runner Donald Trump by name, but he appeared to take a shot at the real-estate mogul who has called for tougher border security and immigration enforcement.
“This whole anti-immigrant sentiment that’s out there in our politics right now is contrary to who we are,” the president said. “Don’t pretend that somehow 100 years ago the immigration process was all smooth and strict. That’s not how it worked.”
The Iowa event was billed as an effort to call attention to Mr. Obama’s policies aimed at making college more affordable, but the president was clearly riled when he got a question from a student about whether illegal immigrant students could qualify for his proposal for two years of free tuition. Under current policy, they can’t.
The president said the question raised a broader issue about young illegal immigrants.
“The notion that somehow we would not welcome their desire to be full-fledged parts of this community and this country and to contribute to serve, makes absolutely no sense,” Mr. Obama said. “When I hear folks talking as if somehow these kids are different from my kids, or less worthy in the eyes of God, that somehow they are less worthy of our respect and consideration and care, I think that’s un-American. I think it is wrong.”
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Last year, Mr. Obama signed an executive order granting deportation amnesty to as many as 5 million illegal immigrants. His policies are a hot issue in the GOP presidential primary, and Mr. Trump surged to an unexpected lead in the polls this summer largely by taking on immigration policy.
The president blasted his critics for pretending that immigration problems are any different than they were decades or even centuries ago.
“There are a whole bunch of folks who came here from all over Europe and all throughout Asia and throughout Central America and certainly who came from Africa who, it wasn’t some orderly process where all the rules applied and everything was strict and ’I came the right way,’” Mr. Obama said. “That’s not how it worked.”
He said in past eras, other immigrants also were “considered unworthy or uneducated or unwashed.”
The president also took swipes at Republicans’ education policies in general, blaming them for failing to support increased education spending.
“It is not sufficient for us to say we care about education if we are not putting resources into education,” Mr. Obama said. “Resources do matter.”
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He also warned voters to reject candidates who bash teachers.
“If you hear a candidate say that the big program with education is teachers, you should not vote for that person,” he said. “It is a hard job, and it is the most important job we’ve got.”
White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Mr. Obama was traveling to Iowa, the center of 2016 presidential politicking, for a reason.
“The president would really like to see a robust debate in the context of 2016 about what we can do to strengthen the economy,” Mr. Earnest told reporters traveling with the president.
Republican presidential hopeful Sen. Marco Rubio, Florida Republican, wrote in an op-ed in the Des Moines Register on Monday that Mr. Obama’s education proposals “do nothing to deal with the underlying problems in the current system.”
“Instead, they would double-down on Washington’s failed strategy of spending more taxpayer money on the same outdated model,” Mr. Rubio said.
• Dave Boyer can be reached at dboyer@washingtontimes.com.
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