In yet another step towards immigration reform, President Obama met Friday with several religious leaders in Washington to discuss the need to fix the immigration system--a meeting that leaders left with optimism on the issue afterwards.
President Obama spoke with faith leaders for roughly an hour that day as they discussed their priorities and problems pertaining to the immigration system in the U.S. The meeting of 14 leaders from different faiths included Evangelicals, Mormonism and Islam, according to the Christian Post.
One of the things that struck a positive chord with those leaders was that President Obama said he wanted to see a bill addressing comprehensive immigration reform within the next 60 days.
"This is the year," Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, told ABC/Univision after the meeting. "I walked out of that meeting with a greater sense of optimism, with the strong chance of passing comprehensive immigration reform this year."
The meeting marks another step that the Obama administration has taken in pushing for immigration reform, an issue that has come into the national forefront since the November elections, when a record number of Latino voters cast their ballots for Obama and rebuked Republican candidate Mitt Romney, who had favored tougher immigration laws.
President Obama has since come up with his own immigration proposal while another counter-proposal has been issued by the "Gang of Eight" bipartisan U.S. Senate panel of Republican and Democratic senators. Both feature proposed pathways to immigration for many of the 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. as well as tighter border security.
Jim Wallis, president of Sojourners, a Christian social justice group, told CNN after the meeting that he sensed that President Obama was making immigration a high priority in his second term.
"He said that while every issue has politics, but on this question, it really was am moral issue to him and he sees the faith community as lifting that up," Wallis said. "He was really fervent about the role of faith in this debate."
Stephan Bauman, president of World Relief, was also pleased with what he called the president's "genuine commitment" towards finding a solution on reforming immigration.
"I believe the President understands the moral implications of not fixing our broken system and also the ongoing challenges that many undocumented immigrants face in our country today," he told the Christian Post. "As an organization that has been empowering local churches in the United States to serve immigrants in our communities, we feel encouraged that the President is committed to working with Members of Congress to pass immigration reform this year."