President Barack Obama's speech in favor of immigration reform failed to impress an audience of day laborers that included a few of the millions of undocumented immigrants who may soon have a chance at legal status if Congress agrees.
Day laborers who watched the president's speech Tuesday at the Pomona Economic Opportunity Center, a day labor center on Mission Boulevard, said they felt left out of Obama's call to allow the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants living inside the United States a chance to become legal.
While praising immigrants' roles in establishing large companies like Google or Intel, Obama also boasted of his administration's role in deporting illegal-immigrant criminals and called for increased border security and "cracking down" on businesses who hire undocumented immigrants.
"When he talked about border security, the room just died," said Javier Hernandez, a co-founder of the Inland Empire Immigrant Youth Coalition who watched the speech with day laborers in Pomona.
"People like us, let's say, we earn money like this. Conservative websites such as Breitbart.com or Townhall.com published critical coverage of the president's speech with headlines such as "Obama: No Border Security Before Path to Citizenship" or "Obama's Immigration Plan: Expedite 11 Million Illegal Immigrants to Citizenship."
Obama's speech, delivered in Las Vegas, followed a call Monday by eight Republican and Democratic senators for new immigration laws.
But among those in Pomona, support from leading Republicans and Democrats was not enough to convince them that new immigration laws are on the horizon.
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