For years, US President Barack Obama berated Republicans for putting their own political interests ahead of good policy on immigration. In two successive presidential campaigns, he held up Washington’s failure to act on immigration as a prime example of the cynical decisionmaking he said must end in Washington.
Now that he is delaying his own immigration plan until after election day, Obama has opened himself to charges that he is just as guilty of playing politics.
The president’s about-face, reversing a promise to take action near the end of summer, has left him with few allies going forward on an issue that he had hoped would become a core component of his legacy.
Immigration groups are decrying what they see as a cravenly political move that puts their best interests yet again on the back burner. Republicans are far from appeased; they are accusing Obama of ducking accountability because he still plans to act, just not until after voters go to the polls. Democrats, for the most part, are trying their hardest to stay out of it.
Obama’s explanation for his decision to delay — that a summer surge in Central American children crossing into the US illegally had poisoned the atmosphere for immediate action — did little to quell speculation that Obama had actually yielded to midterm politics. After all, nervous red-state Democrats had been complaining throughout the summer that voters would punish them if Obama took provocative, unilateral executive action now, such as deferring deportation for millions of immigrants.
“It’s definitely politics,” Republican Senator Marco Rubio said on Sunday.
For Obama, the decision to delay action on immigration laid down a new marker in his evolution from the young candidate who in 2008 vowed to put an end to a political system in Washington driven by self-interest. That message helped galvanize support from a younger and more diverse electorate — including millions of Hispanics.
But as president, Obama has found that promise among the most difficult to deliver — on more than immigration.
“The driving motivation here is take action in a way that is sustainable and successful,” said Dan Pfeiffer, Obama’s senior adviser. “Taking action in the hothouse of the political season could end up being a major setback for the cause of fixing our immigration system.”
Eager to deter the notion he was putting off progress for good, Obama set himself another deadline: The White House now says executive action will come by the end of 2014.
But for a president who had hoped to be remembered as an agent for change, even a few months could alter the way Obama’s leadership is perceived.
“In and of itself, a delay of a few weeks on this one issue is not that big of a deal,” said Janet Murguia, president of the National Council of La Raza, in an interview.
“But the lens the Latino community looks at this through is since before 2008, when promises were made that just have not been kept throughout this administration. All of this does end up affecting how Latinos in the end will view his legacy.”
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