Obama is now facing pressure from citizens about his plans for America. This time it isn't the economy or about military actions. It is immigration.

As President Obama prepares for his first trip to Mexico, activists are intensifying the campaign for comprehensive immigration reform that they fear has been shoved to the back burner by the economic slump...

...The White House on Thursday downplayed reports that the administration would push for immigration reform as early as next month, clarifying that while the issue is a priority, dealing with the economic crisis comes first.

Obama has said he supports a combination of enforcing laws and opening up the system. He wants to see a path for citizenship that would mean having an illegal immigrant pay a fine, learn English, and then get in line for citizenship.

While the Obama administration claims they want to reform immigration policy, they have also claimed they want to repeal don't-ask-don't-tell...and haven't done a thing. Instead, in January the army fired eleven soldiers for being gay.

Like his backpedaling on that issue, immigration needs attention. Immediately.

Why the urgency? Apparently, the U.S. government has taken to deporting American citizens.

Pedro Guzman has been an American citizen all his life. Yet in 2007, the 31-year-old Los Angeles native — in jail for a misdemeanor, mentally ill and never able to read or write — signed a waiver agreeing to leave the country without a hearing and was deported to Mexico as an illegal immigrant.

For almost three months, Guzman slept in the streets, bathed in filthy rivers and ate out of trash cans while his mother scoured the city of Tijuana, its hospitals and morgues, clutching his photo in her hand. He was finally found trying to cross the border at Calexico, 100 miles away.

Pedro Guzman was arrested on a misdemeanor trespassing charge. Sentenced to three years' probation and three months in jail, Guzman told officers in jail that he was born in California. This fact was noted in official records. Unfortunately, that didn't stop a sheriff's employee from taking advantage of Guzman's mental state to manipulate him into signing an agreement to leave the country without a hearing.

The whole experience left Guzman so traumatized he know refuses to stand out in the sun as it reminds him of Mexico. He undergoes frequent counseling sessions to deal with what happened to him.

Actions like this aren't simply an inconvenience to the victims like Pedro Guzman. They are indicative of a racist system.

As a Pew Hispanic Center survey has found, the harassment of Hispanics by authorities is out of control.

In the survey, nearly one-in-ten Hispanic adults--native-born U.S. citizens (8%) and immigrants (10%) alike--report that in the past year the police or other authorities have stopped them and asked them about their immigration status.

So is Pedro Guzman an anomaly? Unfortunately, no.

It is illegal to deport U.S. citizens or detain them for immigration violations. Yet citizens still end up in detention because the system is overwhelmed, acknowledged Victor Cerda, who left Immigration and Customs Enforcement in 2005 after overseeing the system. The number of detentions overall is expected to rise by about 17 percent this year to more than 400,000, putting a severe strain on the enforcement network and legal system.

The result is the detention of citizens with the fewest resources: the mentally ill, minorities, the poor, children and those with outstanding criminal warrants, ranging from unpaid traffic tickets to failure to show up for probation hearings. Most at risk are Hispanics, who made up the majority of the cases the AP found...

...It's impossible to know exactly how many citizens have been detained or deported because nobody keeps track. Kara Hartzler, an attorney at the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project in Arizona, testified at a U.S. House hearing last year that her group alone sees 40 to 50 jailings a month of people with potentially valid claims to citizenship.

"These cases are surprisingly, painfully common," she said.

The nonprofit Vera Institute for Justice found 322 people with citizenship claims in 13 immigration prisons in 2007, up from 129 the year before. That number does not include possible citizens in the nation's more than 300 other immigration prisons.

America was founded by immigrants and it is unethical for those same immigrants and sons of immigrants to now slam the door behind them and say "no more". Americans should support immigration.

As I have written before:

On the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty is a sonnet by Emma Lazarus entitled "The New Colossus".

..."Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

For generations, the Statue of Liberty has welcomed visitors and immigrants. Should America continue to persecute those huddled masses yearning to breathe free...why don't we just removed the torch and instead have Lady Liberty giving the middle finger to all? It seems like that image better reflects America's immigration policy.