By Maria Peña

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama said that he didn’t aspire to the White House to put off America’s most pressing problems – and so in his State of the Union address he must make it clear that his commitment to immigration reform in 2010 is not just talk.

The Latino community will be waiting Wednesday night when Obama addresses a joint session of Congress, above all because economic recovery and immigration reform continue to be unkept promises.

Such groups as the National Council of La Raza hope that immigration reform will be included in the speech, even while admitting that the times are inhospitable for its approval this year.

The presidency, as Obama has said, is not for the faint of heart, and immigration reform offers him a great opportunity for displaying leadership with a subject as complex as it is volatile.

At stake is the destiny of 12 million undocumented aliens who contribute to the economic growth of this country, according to recent studies.

“I want to see that the president is committed to reform: it’s something he promised as a candidate, and people who voted for him voted for change. He has said he doesn’t fear difficult decisions, and this will be one of them,” John Amaya, director of migration affairs of the NCLR, told Efe.

On Tuesday in an interview aired on TV channel ABC, Obama said that he prefers to be “a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president.”

“You know, there’s a tendency in Washington to think that our job description of elected officials is to get re-elected. That’s not our job description. Our job description is to solve problems and to help people,” the president told ABC’s Diane Sawyer.

In a markedly populist speech in Ohio last Friday, Obama said that he didn’t aspire to the presidency in order to pass the tough challenges on to others but “to confront them – once and for all.”

That is what the Hispanic community hopes, whose vote was decisive for his electoral victory in November 2008.

“We continue to work closely with members of both parties on this important subject, to put together a bill that can get wide bipartisan support,” Luis Miranda, a White House spokesman on Hispanic issues, told Efe.

Democratic sources say the State of the Union speech will be full of references to health-care reform, job creation, the budget deficit, and will include matters like financial and energy reform, education and immigration.

It won’t be the first time that Obama has linked those subjects to the economic revival of the United States, where unemployment stands at 10 percent and particularly affects African-Americans and Hispanics.

“It’s urgent to understand that fixing the broken immigration system is important both for the economy and for the security” of this country, a Democratic source told Efe while asking to remain anonymous.

He added that the president “will continue fighting so that ordinary folks can be heard, while confronting the special interests that dominate Washington with their armies of lobbyists.”

Obama has made it clear that he will not abandon health-care reform, and very few believe that the victory of Republican Scott Brown in the race for the late Ted Kennedy’s Massachusetts Senate seat is going to derail his political agenda.

Brown has said that, together with the other Republicans, he will halt the reformist plan in the Senate.

At least in public, that doesn’t worry Obama’s assessors all that much: even without a filibuster-proof 60 votes, the Democrats approved at the beginning of 2009 laws for wage equity, the expansion of medical coverage for poor children, more restrictions on tobacco advertising, and a multimillion-dollar stimulus package.

The White House says that Obama’s speech will be, above all, his view of the future course of the nation.

That future must include immigration reform and is something that activists will remind Obama about in protests and vigils in several cities around the country. EFE