Obama fights back

After the capture and death of Osama bin Laden, President Obama has taken the political initiative and rekindled the reformist agenda with which he arrived in the White House. After a surge in the polls, on Tuesday he visited El Paso, on the border with Mexico, an area of the country at the center of the immigration debate. There he spoke openly of the need for reforms to immigration laws and the regularization of the situation of foreigners living clandestinely in the United States ? the majority of them of Hispanic origin. Should it be successful, the measure would affect around 11 million people.

This is the second time that Obama has tried to move forward with such an initiative; the first had scant success shortly after his victory, and did not prosper despite the fact that the Democrats had a majority in Congress. That is not the case right now, which means that immigration reform may get bogged down once more. But Obama needs to connect with that substantial part of his voter base that is made up of Hispanics. According to the opinion polls, Americans are more sensitive to the reforms than when Obama tried to get them through the first time around. As on other occasions, in El Paso the president made an effort to present the regularization of foreigners as an extension of the finest traditions of the country, rather than an inconvenient novelty. He referred to the United States as a nation of immigrants, and underlined the importance of incorporating them as citizens so that, just as was the case in the past, they can develop their abilities in optimum conditions.

The migratory reform that Obama is pursuing is in stark contrast to the measures that have been taken this week by the conservative government in Denmark, which reached an agreement with the country's far right to unilaterally suspend its membership of the Schengen Treaty. This comes on the back of the crisis prompted by the reactions of Sarkozy and Berlusconi to the arrival in Lampedusa of people fleeing Libya. The evidence suggests that while this is the first time that a European member state has taken such a step, it won't be the last.

Obama did not give in to the more radical wing of the Republican Party. The Danish government, like other European governments, is doing exactly that with the far right. Time will tell as to which strategy is the more efficient to combat the rising populist and xenophobic impulses.