Undocumented immigrants sit in a holding cell at the U.S. Border Patrol detainee... Read More
Obama’s unilateral action, circumventing a deadlocked Congress, promises to remove the immediate risk of deportation for 4 million to 5 million undocumented immigrants and initiate a showdown with congressional Republicans.
The debate may set battle lines for the 2016 presidential campaign and shape the political loyalties of fast-growing ethnic groups for years to come.
Obama, in a White House video posted yesterday, said his speech at 8 p.m. Washington time will explain how he’s tackling an issue that’s been allowed “to fester far too long.” He’ll then fly to Las Vegas tomorrow to discuss his immigration actions at a school, the president said.
Obama hosted a private dinner at the White House last night to lay things out for congressional Democratics. The president said the reprieve would affect as many as 5 million people and he explained who would qualify and who wouldn’t. He also described other provisions including border security enhancements, according to a person familiar with the meeting who asked for anonymity.
President Barack Obama said his speech at 8 p.m. Washington time will explain how he’s... Read More
Republican congressional leaders say the president is exceeding his authority. They are searching for a response to Obama that satisfies their rank-and-file lawmakers, while avoiding a shutdown of the federal government that could hurt the party’s image.
Boehner’s Politics
House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio is fielding demands that include suing the president, censuring him, threatening to cut off all government funding or perhaps the most likely response, choking off the portion of funds he would need to implement his orders.Obama and Democrats would reap the political benefits of another government shutdown, said Oklahoma Representative Tom Cole, a Boehner ally.
“We have every right to be mad. But when you’re upset and mad, doing what the person that provoked you wants you to do is usually not a very smart way to go,” Cole told reporters. “The smart thing is to find another way to deal with the president, because he’s trying to pick a bar fight.”
The political stakes were underscored by the Obama administration’s roll-out of the announcement: a rare prime-time address to the nation via cable TV news channels, Spanish-language Univision, and other outlets, though the three major U.S. broadcast networks declined to air the speech. That will be followed by a second speech, in Nevada, a presidential battleground state.
Nevada’s electorate has increasingly trended Democratic as its Hispanic population grows and the ethnic group’s political allegiances shift more toward the president’s party.
Deportation Protection
Between 4 million and 5 million undocumented immigrants will be protected from deportation for the rest of Obama’s presidency, according to a person familiar with the plan. That exceeds the nearly 2.7 million given permanent legal status by the 1986 immigration law signed by Republican President Ronald Reagan.The bipartisan Senate legislation that stalled in the Republican-led House would have initially granted legal status to 8 million immigrants in the country illegally, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office.
Obama’s executive action would give temporary visas to undocumented immigrants whose children were born in the U.S., according to people familiar with the proposal. It would expand eligibility for his 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that has given protection to 600,000 child immigrants.
Hispanic Voters
The planned action, which the White House says is a partial fix for the U.S. immigration system, may improve Obama’s standing with Hispanic voters after he presided over a record number of deportations. It may damage his chances of working with Republicans in Congress on other issues.The idea behind his strategy is to cover categories of immigrants that would be politically difficult for Republicans to oppose, because that would involve separating parents from their children, according to a Democratic aide familiar with the matter.
Ana Navarro, former chief Hispanic adviser to Arizona Senator John McCain, said Republicans “need to resist the urge of taking their toys and going home from the playground because Obama stuck his tongue out at them.” A fight over keeping parents with their children won’t be a winning political argument for Republicans, she said.
By centering his plan on family unification, Obama is seeking to drive a wedge in the Republican Party, which includes lawmakers who support what the president is doing even if they oppose his use of presidential powers to achieve it.
Senator John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, said Obama was abusing his power and should have worked more with Republicans.
‘Abused’ Authority
“There is nobody who’s abused the authority to issue executive orders more than the current occupant of the White House,” Cornyn said. Obama is undermining Republican support for “common-sense immigration bills,” he said.A group of at least 60 House Republicans is pushing to use a government funding bill to deny the president the money needed to implement his plan.
Even some of the most outspoken critics of Obama’s immigration stance expressed caution over risking a federal shutdown in order to reprimand him.
Congress must approve funds by Dec. 11 to keep the government open or trigger an interruption similar to last year, when Republican demands to defund the president’s health-care law led to a 16-day partial shutdown.
Expressing Disapproval
Iowa Representative Steve King, who once called for an electric fence along the U.S.-Mexico border, said yesterday he wants legislation expressing disapproval of Obama’s actions or to censure him before considering a fight over funding.“I only want to do the minimum -- the minimum -- to put the president back in his constitutional boundaries,” said King.
Earlier, Boehner and his allies said they’re reviewing alternatives to using a funding bill to fight the executive action, including retroactively canceling money in 2015 for any action taken by Obama.
In an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released yesterday, 48 percent of Americans oppose Obama taking executive action on immigration while 38 percent support it. About 14 percent have no opinion or are unsure. The poll was conducted Nov. 14-17 and has a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points.
Work Permits
Obama will also expand a program that gives work permits for up to 29 months to foreign graduates of U.S. universities with degrees in science, technology, engineering and math, according to the people, who requested anonymity before a formal announcement. That provides more workers to fill high-tech jobs.The administration already broadened eligibility for the program in 2012 by increasing the qualifying fields of study.
The executive action will include enforcement measures and changes to legal-immigration procedures, the people said.
Obama is expected to stop short of including the parents of children brought to the U.S. illegally, called dreamers, the people said. Senate Democrats were pressing the White House to cover this group under the current plan.
Still, a White House official said about half of those parents would be covered by other criteria.
Republicans aren’t united on the immigration issue. Some say the party must take steps to ease its stance against undocumented immigrants while others consider them lawbreakers who don’t deserve what many of them label amnesty.
National demographic shifts, particularly in competitive states such as Nevada and Florida, make the support of Hispanic voters important to both political parties.
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