http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/30/us/politics/obama-said-to-weigh-delaying-action-on-immigration.html?_r=1Obama Said to Weigh Delaying Action on Immigration
By MICHAEL D. SHEARAUG. 29, 2014
WASHINGTON — Under pressure from nervous Democratic Senate candidates in tight races, President Obama is rethinking the timing of his pledge to act on his own to reshape the nation’s immigration system by summer’s end, and could instead delay some or all of his most controversial proposals until after the midterm elections in November, according to people familiar with White House deliberations.
The president vowed in late June to act unilaterally out of frustration with what he termed Republican obstruction, and said he would announce a decision soon after receiving recommendations from top aides at the end of the summer.
But now Mr. Obama and his aides appear to be backing away from a firm commitment to that timing. In remarks to reporters on Thursday, Mr. Obama hinted at the possibility of a delay.
“Some of these things do affect timelines, and we’re just going to be working through as systematically as possible in order to get this done,” Mr. Obama said. “But have no doubt, in the absence of congressional action, I’m going to do what I can to make sure the system works better.”
Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, said Friday that the president was “as determined as ever to take that kind of action on his own.” But he and other White House officials declined to repeat the president’s earlier pledge of an announcement by the end of this summer, or to say whether the president was considering delaying some of his decisions until later this year.
“That’s putting the cart before the horse,” Mr. Earnest said. “Those who are speculating about how those recommendations might be implemented are a little ahead of themselves.”
A person familiar with the White House deliberations disputed part of a report on Friday in The Los Angeles Times that suggested Mr. Obama might announce tighter enforcement measurements in the coming days and then delay until after the election a proposal to shield from deportation millions of illegal immigrants.
“The notion that we would divide up enforcement and the other recommendations is highly unlikely,” the person said. But the person declined to say whether an announcement might be delayed or divided up in another way.
Inside the White House, the timing of an announcement has become the subject of a fierce debate.
Some of Mr. Obama’s advisers are urging him to postpone it, fearful of the political ramifications of a sweeping action to protect millions of illegal immigrants from deportation and provide many of them official work papers. Such a move by the president, some senior officials worry, could set off a pitched fight with Republicans and dash hopes for Democrats running in conservative states.
Democratic control of the Senate hinges on the outcomes of about a half-dozen close races in states where Mr. Obama is not popular, and strategists fear that an immigration announcement could complicate Democratic efforts to prevail in those states, including several races in states that Mr. Obama lost in both 2008 and 2012.
But others inside the White House are pushing the president to stick to his promised schedule, regardless of the immediate political consequences. They argue that Republicans will criticize the president and attack Democratic candidates even if Mr. Obama delays parts of his announcement until after the election.
And some argue that the Republican reaction — which could include calls for impeachment of the president or a move to shut down the government — could benefit Democrats politically by creating a backlash against Republicans among voters.
Top White House aides say the president is eager to do as much as possible to shift immigration enforcement toward dangerous criminals and repeat border-crossers, and away from families who have lived without legal status in the United States for years. “We very much want to do an executive action,” a senior White House adviser said. “It’s something we want to do.”
The president is under immense pressure from immigration activists and many members of his own party in Congress, who have publicly and privately demanded that Mr. Obama allow millions of illegal immigrants who are otherwise law-abiding to emerge from the shadows by lifting the threat of arrest and deportation and granting them work permits. The push took on added urgency after Speaker John A. Boehner conceded this summer that congressional efforts to overhaul the immigration system had failed.
At the same time, the president’s repeated efforts to go around a gridlocked Congress have already prompted a Republican lawsuit alleging that he has abused the executive powers of his office. A decision to protect millions of illegal immigrants from deportation would provide new ammunition to critics who accuse Mr. Obama of building an “imperial presidency” with little regard to the nation’s laws.
“If he acts unilaterally right now and goes in and grants five million people status in the country, I think he blows up the debate, destroys the debate,” said Senator Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican. “He is going to ignite a furor in the country if he thinks he can do that by executive fiat.”
The highly polarized immigration debate has left the president little room to maneuver toward a middle ground.
If the president settles on a modest executive action, he would let down a key Democratic constituency. Such a cautious move would dash expectations that he raised earlier this summer and abandon any real hope of dealing with the 11 million people who are living in the country illegally.
A broader move could risk an impeachment conflagration that could consume the remainder of his presidency, and a clash over the balance of powers between the executive and the legislative branches of government could reverberate for decades.
In the summer of 2012, Mr. Obama responded to similar pressure from activists by announcing a program to provide work permits and temporary protection from deportation for so-called Dreamers, who were brought illegally to the country as children. The administration argued at the time that it could create the program without approval from Congress because of its authority to prioritize enforcement resources.
