Obama: Denying Illegals Same Rights as Citizens Violates ‘Spirit’ of Selma

On Friday, President Barack Obama implied that not granting illegal immigrants the same rights as U.S. citizens violates the spirit of the “Bloody Sunday” march 50 years ago, when black Americans were beaten while demanding voting rights they were being denied as U.S. citizens.

Obama, who has enacted two executive amnesty programs for illegal immigrants since 2012, said that deporting DREAMers “is not true to the spirit” of the civil rights movement.

“The notion that some kid that was brought here when he was two or three years old might somehow be deported at the age of 20 or 25 even though they’ve grown up as American, that’s not who we are,” he reportedly said in an interview with Sirius XM’s Joe Madison, according to The Hill. “That’s not true to the spirit of what the march on Selma was about.”

Obama, who will join former President George W. Bush and 100 Members of Congress this weekend to commemorate the 50th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday,” then added that, “when you think about the principle that was upheld that day and in subsequent days at the Edmund Pettus Bridge, it was the promise of an inclusive America, it was the promise of an America where everybody was equal under the law.”

He even tried to link the civil rights movement to the gay rights movement.

“One of the great reasons we celebrate that day of the civil rights movement, and we celebrate the march at the Edmund Pettus Bridge, is that it didn’t just open up the doors for black folks… it was about America and who we are,” he reportedly said. “And that’s a legacy we have to be proud of, but we have to understand what that spirit was about, it wasn’t just about one race, it was about who all of us are as Americans.”

As Breitbart News has noted, “the civil rights movement of the 1960s was about ensuring that black Americans received all of the rights they were due as citizens of the United States while today’s pro-amnesty movement is about demanding full rights for non-citizens who entered the country illegally.”

But that has not stopped amnesty advocates like Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL), who has said that the amnesty movement is “our Selma,” from trying to link the amnesty movement to the black civil rights movement.

Amnesty advocates will reportedly flock to Selma this weekend to try to push the false narrative that amnesty for illegal immigrants is akin to the black civil rights movement.