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Fresh off her veto of her state’s “birther” bill, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer says that the White House gave her a “snub” by leaving her off the guest list for a meeting about immigration reform.
“I wish I would have been invited,” the Republican said Tuesday night on Fox News. “You would have thought one of the governors would have been invited, since we are on the front lines fighting for security there. It was a little bit of a snub, if you will.” More broadly, she said, the meeting illustrated a disconnect between President Barack Obama’s immigration policy goals and the reality on the ground in border states.
Obama sat down Tuesday with a group that included New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the Rev. Al Sharpton, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-Calif.). The guest list didn’t include any current governors or members of Congress, though it did include some business leaders, including the COO of Facebook and former Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.), who now works for JPMorgan Chase.
The list of attendees leaned toward those who would support the Obama administration’s approach to immigration. The meeting itself has been framed as an effort to show Obama supporters that he is trying to make progress on the issue even if it’s doomed to stall in Congress.
Brewer, meanwhile, has been a foe of the administration’s immigration policy. The Justice Department filed suit against Arizona to stop the state’s controversial illegal immigration law Brewer championed — which requires all immigrants to carry documentation and allows police to arrest suspected illegal immigrants without a warrant, among other provisions — from being enforced. Brewer filed a countersuit earlier this year in response, saying the federal government has failed to protect her state from an “invasion” by illegal immigrants. Last week, a court refused to lift a stay on the law, and the Justice Department responded by asking a judge to dismiss the countersuit, The Associated Press reported early Wednesday.
Brewer characterized the White House meeting as a gathering of people who might support Obama’s vision of “comprehensive immigration reform,” including a pathway to citizenship and the passage of the DREAM Act, while her focus is on border security. “It has nothing to do with what we really need to have done, and that is to get our borders secured.”
“Our citizens need to feel secure in their homes. It just continues to grow with the issue of people coming across our borders illegally, the drug cartels,” she said.
That view was missing from the White House meeting, Brewer said. “I think I could have added insight to the situation that Arizona certainly is facing,” she said. “I’m a little bit offended. I think that I put my name out there. I put my career out there. I’ve been fighting hard for the people of Arizona in regards to this. I believe I’ve been relentless. And I think I have a lot to offer. I’m going to speak for the people.”
“If we could sit down and discuss these things, we could get the solutions, maybe we could get something implemented. And it is what I told him when I visited with him,” she said, referring to a meeting she had with Obama months ago. “I’m not interested in a lot of solutions until we get our borders secured. It’s simple. And not having been invited today was truly a snub. It was a snub.”
Topic: Jan Brewer: White House snubbed me on immigration talks (Read 2101 times)