Obama’s Immigration Gambit
By Victor Landa, NewsTaco
He played it well. You may not like the outcome, you may think President Obama took too long to make a move on immigration, that his record of deportations is despicable, or you may think he overreached the power of the presidency. Chances are you may like what he’s done with his executive actions and root for the orders to prevail in court. A sure bet, though, is that you’re engaged with the immigration issue and have an opinion about it.
That may have been the plan all along.
Immigration is the most important Latino political issue.
I’m not saying it’s the most important issue for Latinos, that’s another consideration. But if you were to start a list under the heading of “Latino political issues,” immigration would be at the top. [pullquote]But if you were to start a list under the heading of “Latino political issues,” immigration would be at the top.[/pullquote] It’s a national issue, and in most people’s minds when you say immigration Latinos are implied. It’s different from, say, education. [tweet_dis]When someone says education, Latinos may or may not be in the mental mix. But education is a top priority for Latinos.[/tweet_dis] It’s a semantic slip-knot that leaves meaning and priorities tangled with the ends going in different directions.
It’s also a political Gordian knot. Everyone says they want immigration reform, every side seems to have simple expectations. For Republicans it’s no amnesty and a secure border. Except, they don’t trust the president to deliver on either count. For Democrats it’s a path to citizenship. Except the president deports workers at a record-setting pace.
And you have a stalemate, with either side pointing blame at the other, with undocumented crossings at record lows, with families and children detained for constitution-breaking reasons, with calls for the militarization of the border, with families separated by deportation, with immigrants blamed for unemployment and drought.
So the president signed a unilateral order. What’s the worse that could happen?
That the GOP would be riled into challenging the president in court? That immigration reform would remain in a political mire and deportations would continue? Obama had nothing to lose, and plenty to gain.
[tweet_dis]By signing his executive orders on immigration Obama flanked his opposition and forced them to react.[/tweet_dis]The GOP has two weaknesses on immigration: one is that they sound increasingly nasty and intolerant whenever they broach the subject, the other is that they have no plan of their own to offer – tweetable quotes to the #GOPchoirloft don’t count as a plan.
I get the feeling Obama isn’t concerned with the fate of his executive actions.
The Department of Justice asked an appellate court to temporarily lift the injunction against the President’s plan. The panel of judges said no, and the DOJ left it at that. The GOP predictably gloated, and the gloating moved them farther to the perceivable edge of intolerance. An NBC and Wall street Journal poll says six in ten Americans favor a path to citizenship for undocumented people.
This isn’t about political nuance and “x’s”and “o’s.” This is the President goading the Republicans to do something about immigration, knowing well how they’d react, knowing well that the executive orders would make him look like he’s standing for an issue with 60 percent approval, and knowing also that the GOP’s opposition in court makes them look like they’re rasing a fist on the side of the losing 40 percent.
[tweet_dis]The only play the Republicans have left is to stall immigration reform[/tweet_dis], and accuse the President of doing what they wouldn’t do themselves. Did they expect Obama to enact orders the GOP would applaud?If you’re undocumented you’re in the same legal limbo you were before the executive orders were signed, so there’s no change, except for the one’s deported in the interim. But they don’t vote, callous as it sounds.
My guess is that there will be no immigration reform in the near future, and the legal restraints on the President’s executive orders will be challenged at the Supreme Court. That leaves us in 2016, at best.
You see what he did there?
[tweet_dis]Obama took immigration and tee’d it up for Hillary.[/tweet_dis]What? Were you expecting something before then?
[Photo by DonkeyHotey]
