Obama Will Delay Immigration Executive Action
President Barack Obama has abandoned his pledge for executive action on immigration near summer's end, in what appears to be concern for Senate Democrats who are at risk this November.
In a reversal of Obama's stance just two months ago, in which he vowed to take executive action on immigration policy in the absence of congressional legislation, the president angrily blamed House Republicans from the White House Rose Garden on June 30.
"[F]or more than a year, Republicans in the House of Representatives have refused to allow an up-or-down vote on that Senate bill or any legislation to fix our broken immigration system," said Obama in his June 30 remarks. "And I held off on pressuring them for a long time to give Speaker Boehner the space he needed to get his fellow Republicans on board."
According to White House officials, Obama is still determined to follow through with his plans to protect immigrant families from deportation, but he came to the realization that a move before the midterm elections in November could backfire by mobilizing anti-immigration conservative across the country and hurt the chances of Democrats seeking reelection — a move that would, in turn, compromise plans for a permanent immigration solution.
RELATED: ICE Developing Gigantic For-Profit Family Lockup in Texas
Earlier this week, Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight relaunched its Senate model, showing that Republicans have an edge over Democrats and are favored to take the Senate at this point with a 64 percent chance of doing so.
The president is expected to to discuss his decision during an interview with Chuck Todd on NBC's "Meet the Press" that will air on Sunday.
UPDATE, 4:08 p.m.: Janet Murguía, National Council of La Raza president and CEO, issued a statement: "When candidate Obama asked our community for support in 2008 and 2012, he urged us all to vote based on our hopes, not our fears. Today, President Obama gave in to the fears of Democratic political operatives, crushing the hopes of millions of hard-working people living under the constant threat of deportation and family separation."
This article was originally published at http://www.thewire.com/national/2014/09/obama-will-delay-immigration-executive-action/379739/
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