There is a fascinating political shift occurring in Washington this weekend after President Barack Obama walked back from this pledge to act by the end of summer on his unilateral immigration actions and said that he will now wait until after the elections. The move has been openly discussed as an effort to support struggling Democratic candidates who are facing huge opposition to the immigration proposals and are leery of the President taking any action given his own record low polling numbers (which now stand at 38 percent according to Gallup). Various Democratic candidates have been complaining that they are losing ground due to the immigration proposal and that Obama’s pledge could further worsen the currently bleak picture for losses in Congress (and possibly losing both houses to the GOP). While the White House originally saw the proposal as a no-lose proposition and popular with the base, it has proven far less popular around the country, particularly in battleground states. Polls show far greater opposition than support for the proposal. Immigration advocates are denouncing the delay as putting “politics over people.”
The thrust of the decision is that the changes will be made but not until after voters are no longer able to express their opposition in the upcoming elections. That would seem to be a highly insulting proposition for voters, but it has not been treated as anything other than politics as usual by the media. It is a curious approach for a President who ran on the change slogan like “Time for A Change” and “Change You Can Believe In.” It is a “change you can count on [but not vote on]” approach to politics.
Two White House officials said that the move was meant to insulate Democrats from the public backlash to the immigration moves. This is in sharp contrast to the June 30th Rose Garden speech where Obama declared that he had directed Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson and Attorney General Eric Holder to give him recommendations for executive action by the end of summer and that he would “adopt those recommendations without further delay.”
My views on unilateral presidential action are well known and have little to due to the merits of these issues (Indeed, I agree with some of the President’s policies and objectives). However, what continues to amaze me is the character of modern American politics. Here you have politicians openly discussing how to avoid voter wrath by withholding action in a major area. In reality, I think some GOP leaders are doing the same thing in light of the recent defeat of Cantor and the clear success of new candidates running against the immigration proposals (while the Chamber of Congress and industry interests are pressuring for legalization as beneficial to business). I simply find it remarkable that politicians can get away with openly withholding proposals to evade a public backlash but promising that, as soon as the voters go home, they will move on the proposals. It strikes me as a tad duplicitous, but then again little makes sense to me in American politics anymore.
Source: AP
Karen please provide links you say it is easy to find so you must know the google term(s) needed. My computer will not let me have more then 1, 2 windoews open at a time or it freezes so I would have to close wht I am doing to try and google it
Nick – yep, you’re exactly right. And those are just the numbers that have reported in to ICE. How many died? How many snuck through?
Lee:
“my computer is acting up so can’t look for links but Nick no one is letting thse kids stay either”
Not true, Lee. Over 95% of them never show up for their court dates. We drive or fly them where they want to go, including Hawaii, and then they disappear. Like millions of other illegal immigrants do in CA. The last figures I looked at showed about 27 had been sent home.
This is just math. It’s fairly easy to find the statistics on how many court dates are missed, etc.
It is immoral to encourage this. There are a lot of kids who DIED on the way here, and anyone who voted for the Dream Act shares responsibility in this mess. It sent such an obvious green light for parents to fling their kids at the border, trusting coyotes who often engage in human trafficking, that the WH made enormous estimates when they advertised for bids for transport. The WH KNEW this would happen, because their estimated figures were right there on the job posting. I’ve posted that link here before, but don’t have the time to find it again. It breaks my heart to think of all those kids who drowned, who are languishing in some brothel somewhere, all because of the Dream Act.
There is no excuse on this entire Earth for fraud in the VA, including budget. The VA’s budget, in fact, increased every year for the past decade. But, when you have 8 government employees handling the case load of a single private practice cardiologist, one can see how bloated government health care under performs, despite massive budgets.
It is completely irrelevant, however, how efficient or inefficient the VA was. They were discovered engaging in fraud with patient records way back in an IG’s report covering 2005-2008. Bush failed to enact all of the recommended reforms before handing the reigns over to Obama. And here we are, years later, and the VA was STILL engaging in patient fraud. It was the worst kept secret in the history of the world. There is no reason for it, no excuse for it, and no mitigating circumstance for it.
They lied to make it look like they were meeting their goals in order to receive their bonuses. If they had not met their goals, then there would have been committees ad nauseum to investigate. This would have justly driven most private companies into the ground. But there is no accountability in government-run agencies.
leej, The last accounting of Central American children that have fled to the US this year was 63k! That’s not hundreds, that’s 63 thousand.
Karen, When we adopted our son I had to go to the US Embassy in Bogota to get a visa for our son. He and I sat in a room. A Colombian couple w/ a daughter, ~6 years old, had a leg brace. An embassy employee was observing this girls gait determining if she was ambulatory enough for the family to get a visa. The anxiety on these parents and this little girl was palpable. They were doing it the right way. So, yeah, I get their anger.
http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/may/21/katrina-vanden-heuvel/katrina-vanden-heuvel-says-congress-has-slashed-fu/
I’m going to give this one to Karen. The more accurate statement should be the VA has been consistently UNDERFUNDED. With the number of wounded that have flooded the system the funding was inadequate.
Karen, This country is going to be cleaning up all the messes Obama made for decades.
Some of the people I know who are South American said there is a lot of tension between them and those who live closer to our borders who just walk in, while others have to actually wade through the system and follow the law. The same is true for other nationalities who come here legally. They resent those who feel entitled to flout our laws while others wait in line.