Democrats Push for Immigration Delay

Politico

By Seung Min Kim and Burgess Everett

September 10, 2014

Democrats push for immigration delay

Some Senate Democrats are pressing the White House to hold off indefinitely on unilaterally making immigration changes — not just until after the election.

The resistance is coming from Democrats facing tough reelection bids this fall and other moderate voices in the party who say President Barack Obama shouldn’t use executive authority to ease deportations at any time. The pressure is a sign that Obama’s decision over the weekend to punt on making changes until after the election may have done little to ease the political furor over the issue.

Sen. Kay Hagan (D-N.C.), who publicly urged Obama against executive action in July, said this week that she believes such a move is still wrong. When asked whether delaying executive action was not sufficient, Hagan responded: “I don’t think it should be by executive action.”

“Before we left for recess, I made the comment weeks and weeks ago that this is a congressional decision,” said Hagan, who is in a tight reelection battle. “I’ve supported the immigration reform bill and … I think the House needs to take that legislation up.”

Maine Sen. Angus King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, said he stands by his statements last week — made before the delay from the White House was announced — that any major executive action on immigration would be a “mistake,” no matter the timing.

“Significant executive action would undermine support for comprehensive reform and actually perhaps could set the cause back,” King said. “It’s not about the midterms. It’s about whether this is a good policy decision, and I don’t think it is.”

The level of resistance from rank-and-file Democrats could be influential in what the White House ultimately does on immigration, since the administration will be reluctant to make major moves on immigration without strong support from congressional Democrats.

For now, several others are staying silent on the issue.

During interviews and through representatives, a handful of Senate Democrats in competitive reelection bids who had previously expressed concern about Obama acting unilaterally refused to entertain the possibility of further executive action. Democratic senators such as Mark Begich of Alaska, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Al Franken of Minnesota all instead focused on the Republican-led House, where the Senate’s sweeping immigration reform bill has long been dead.

“We’ve already passed a comprehensive piece of legislation on immigration,” Begich said. “You would think the House would take it up.”

Of Obama, Begich added: “He needs to be engaged with Congress on this.”

Still, the delay until after the midterm elections has ensured immigration will stay a campaign issue throughout the fall. The National Republican Senatorial Committee continued its immigration-centered barrage earlier this week, releasing an ad hitting Democrat Michelle Nunn in Georgia for allegedly backing “amnesty.”

Republicans see even more cynical motivations for Democrats: that they are sweeping the issue away for the midterms — where the most competitive races will play out in traditionally conservative territory — and pulling it back out once the battle for the White House in 2016 begins in earnest.

“There are at least some Democrat leaders who don’t seem to want to resolve this issue. They’d rather have the issue politically going into, particularly, 2016,” said Sen. Jerry Moran of Kansas, the head of the Senate GOP’s campaign arm. “Some of their motivation is: Let’s keep this issue around.”

Some of the trepidation from Democrats over immigration this year also illustrates how much the politics of the issue have been upended in the past several months, stemming primarily from the flood of unaccompanied minors arriving at the southern border that gripped the nation this summer.

A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll released this week found that 35 percent of the public said the GOP would do a better job handling immigration, compared with 27 percent who favored Democrats. In December, 31 percent had more faith in Democrats and 26 percent said so about Republicans.

The immigration delay has put top congressional Democrats in a difficult position as immigrant and Latino advocates quickly turned their furor toward the party in the wake of the White House’s decision to hold off.

Activists in Denver protested Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet, the chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, earlier this week, and young undocumented immigrants known as Dreamers were arrested outside Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s office on Tuesday.

Reid said this week that in the absence of congressional action from Republicans, he hopes Obama “goes real big” administratively on deportations.

House Democratic Caucus Chairman Xavier Becerra, the highest-ranking Latino on Capitol Hill, defended Obama on his decision but acknowledged the disappointment that came with the delay.

“On the one hand, the good news is that the president reaffirmed that he will act under the law to fix what he can in this broken immigration system using his executive authority,” Becerra said. “On the other hand, the difficult side of that for many of us is that that won’t happen soon enough because we’re going to wait a couple more months.”

Obama is aware of the political “controversy” surrounding action on deportations, said Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), a close Obama ally who is up for election this year.

But Durbin, one of the authors of the Senate immigration bill that passed last summer, said Obama truly is still wrestling with how far he can go — a factor that weighs on the president as much as whether his party will lose the Senate and make the last two years of his presidency miserable.

“The president, I’ve talked to him many times about that, has struggled with … the limits of his authority. And I know he takes it seriously,” Durbin said. “He said he’s sitting down with [Homeland Security Secretary] Jeh Johnson going through this. He thinks there are possibilities and opportunities there, but it is not an easy quick answer.

Though Durbin blamed House Republicans for forcing Obama to ponder executive action in the first place, Durbin acknowledged that he was “disappointed” in the delay — which could have invigorated Chicago’s swelling Latino population in Durbin’s reelection campaign.

“I wish he had been able to act earlier,” Durbin said of Obama. He added: “The very first time we ever talked about … deportation, he said: ‘There are limits to what I can do. I want to be very careful that I live within those limits.’”

For more information, go to:  www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com