By Yael T. Abouhalkah, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist

America needs to reform its immigration policies. But not this year.

President Barack Obama and Congress have plenty on their plate -- sweeping bills dealing with health care, energy, the environment -- and do not need to tackle such a divisive issue in 2009.

Oh, and the economy isn't so hot (you might have noticed), which makes it more difficult to talk about reforms that could allow immigrants in the country illegally to compete with Americans for jobs.

As a comprehensive New York Times story points out, the Obama administration has taken some sensible steps to ease the concerns over the nation's immigration policies.

In the five months since Mr. Obama took office, he has used his administrative authority to reverse several Bush administration policies widely criticized as doing little to stem illegal immigration while wreaking havoc on immigrant families already here. At the Migration Policy Institute meeting Wednesday, John T. Morton, assistant secretary of homeland security, talked about some of those changes, including new guidelines that make employers, rather than workers, the target of workplace raids, as well as expanded humanitarian-release rules to keep parents detained on immigration charges from being separated from small children.

Obviously, those changes aren't enough for the strongest backers of immigration reform. It's easy to understand the real concerns that concern Hispanic groups and many other supporters.

However, Obama can't afford to waste important political capital -- especially with fellow Democrats while many other major issues loom in Congress -- to wade into that political battle in 2009.