We've been talking about this inevitability for weeks now, so the only 'newsy' item in this Buzzfeed story is the alleged timeline, which the White House is disputing. President Obama has every intention of expanding his DREAM Act-style power grab to millions of adults who entered the country illegally -- he just knows that doing so before voters go to the polls would further endanger a bunch of Democrats up for re-election. Solution: Don't rethink the unpopular idea; delay it until the opportunity for an electoral backlash passes. That political Rubicon looms in 34 days. If reporter Adrian Carrasquillo's sources are correct, Obama will drop his decision on the country less than a week later:
A source tells BuzzFeed News a much-anticipated speech at the Congressional Hispanic Institute Gala by the president will tell Latinos to wait 40 more days until after the election on long-awaited executive actions on immigration. President Obama will reaffirm his promise of administrative actions to slow record deportations before the end of the year during a high-profile speech to Latinos and Hispanic officials on Thursday, BuzzFeed News has learned. His speech at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute (CHCI) gala — his first there since 2011 — comes as activists have expressed anger and frustration over repeated delays on executive actions. Obama will tell Latinos in attendance that he understands their frustration but will also call on them to stick with him and wait 40 more days, until after the election, according to a source who viewed the president’s prepared remarks.
In an update to the story, "a White House official told BuzzFeed News that the president’s remarks do not include a reference to waiting '40 days.'" So the precise time frame remains hazy, even if the president's cynical game is crystal clear. Obama's wink-and-nod act won't stop a group of 'amnesty now' protesters from picketing the event, but Congressional Democrats must be awfully grateful for the temporary reprieve. The president's explanation for the postponement is insulting: “What I’m saying is that I’m going to act because it’s the right thing for the country. But it’s going to be more sustainable and more effective if the public understands what the facts are on immigration,” he said in early September, abandoning a previous pledge to pull the trigger by summer's end. The idea that the American people will 'get the facts' during a noisy election season is laughable. Obama's fig leaf is transparent. In reality, the White House ran a cost-benefit analysis through its overworked political calculation machine and determined that far fewer votes would be jeopardized by aggravating a handful of lefty activists than by announcing Obama's policy weeks before a national election. So a key element of the base will have to wait. They'll get their way, of course, just not immediately. There are ordinary Americans to fool in the interim, and that takes priority.
Meanwhile, the unaccompanied minor border crisis stands unresolved. Though the flow of children across the southern border has abated somewhat, tens of thousands of these kids remain in temporary housing. The House of Representatives passed legislation to deal with the complex problem; Harry Reid's Senate has failed to act. It is an objective fact that Obama's 2012 pre-election 'amnesty' gambit for a subset of illegal immigrants brought into the country as children (which was much more politically palatable) contributed heavily to the subsequent crisis. Causes, effects, etc. What is likely to happen if the 'temporary deportation relief' regime is extended to an untold number of illegal immigrant adults? A bigger, more powerful magnet. The Washington Post reported in July that the administration was made aware of the growing border issues two years ago, but dismissed it as a "local issue." The American people strongly oppose Obama's plan, with fewer than one-quarter of respondents to a September IBD/TIPP poll endorsing the president "sidestep[ping] Congress and act[ing] on his own using executive orders” Hence the delay. I'm on the record as a supporter of immigration reform, but the White House's calculated maneuvering is disgraceful. This is terrible, harmful policy, deliberately detonated after Americans have their say in early November. Oh, and enacting it by executive fiat is beyond Barack Obama's legitimate Constitutional authority, according to...Barack Obama:
Obama may have undermined his case because he has insisted time and again that he's the president, not the king, and "can't just make the laws up by myself." In a 2012 interview with Telemundo, Obama defended his decision to defer deportations for children but said he couldn't go any bigger. "If we start broadening that, then essentially I would be ignoring the law in a way that I think would be very difficult to defend legally. So that's not an option," he said then.
But wait, he placed similar constraints on himself vis-a-vis the DREAM action, then shed those shackles when he decided it was within his political interests to do so. Royal prerogatives, and such. It's good to be King. I'll leave you with this:
An official with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement revealed that about 70 percent of immigrant families the Obama administration had released into the U.S. never showed up weeks later for follow up appointments. The ICE official made the disclosure in a confidential meeting at its Washington headquarters with immigration advocates participating in a federal working group on detention and enforcement policies. The Associated Press obtained an audio recording of Wednesday’s meeting and separately interviewed participants.
As Allahpundit noted last week, the administration has been withholding this relevant information from the public for months now. Instead, they're leaking it to activists behind closed doors -- assuring them that the federal government isn't really taking the whole "enforcement" thing terribly seriously while spinning the opposite tale to the public at large. These people are the veritable definition of bad faith actors, which is why I'm increasingly sympathetic to conservatives who refuse to give one inch on this issue, certainly at this juncture. This administration simply cannot be trusted.
