President Barack Obama on Tuesday put the weight of his administration behind efforts to pass legislation allowing many of the 11 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. to earn citizenship, seeking to build on a rapidly shifting political consensus around the issue.
Obama dedicated the first trip of his second term to calling for an overhaul of immigration laws, making clear it is one of his top domestic priorities. The president, who has said that not passing an overhaul in his first term was his biggest failure, also suggested he has little patience for Congress and would demand that lawmakers vote on his more permissive plan if they do not swiftly pass their own.
"Now is the time," Obama said, eliciting chants of "Si, se puede" — roughly translated as "Yes, it's possible" — from the crowd at a majority Hispanic high school in Las Vegas. "We can't allow immigration reform to get bogged down in an endless debate."