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By David Damore October 9 at 12:17 PM

President Obamas decision to put off executive action on immigration until after November was perceived as a response to political pressures. Recent polling indicates that support for immigration reform has declined and voters are evenly split with respect to which party is more likely to do a better job handling immigration.

In this context, the political calculations underlying Obamas decision rests upon three assumptions: Executive action is a net negative for the Democrats Senate candidates; any potential decrease in Latino turnout that the delay engenders will have little effect because Latino voters, outside of Colorado, are not sufficiently concentrated in states with competitive Senate races; by acting after November the Democrats will win back the support of immigration-centric voters angered by the delay.

I examine the evidence relevant to the first two assumptions.

Support for the first assumption is evident in polling, since public opinion on this issue is somewhat muddled. In a recent New York Times/CBS Poll, 10 percent of respondents indicated that immigration was the most important issue shaping their vote for Congress (14 percent indicated it was the second most important issue) and over two-thirds supported allowing unauthorized immigrants to stay in the country, 54 percent supported a pathway to citizenship, and 51 percent supported executive action. At the same time when asked if they would be more or less likely to vote for congressional candidates who support a pathway to citizenship 30 percent said this would make them more likely, 39 percent indicated it would make them less likely, and 26 percent responded it would make no difference.

In contrast, for most Latinos immigration reform is the animating issue. A June poll conducted by Latino Decisions for the American Progress Fund suggests that enthusiasm for voting among Latinos would decrease by 54 percent and their support for Democratic candidates would decrease by 57percent if executive action were not takenbeforethe election. Although these data are from a national sample and may not project to particular state contexts, they suggest the centrality of immigration to the political participation of Latino voters.

As for the second assumption, clearly Colorado is the state where any decrease in Latino turnout hurts the Democrats prospects. To examine this potential, Table 2 presents the partisanship of registered Colorado Latinos, sorted by their probability of voting as estimated by Latino Decisions and L2s micro-targeting models. While 72 percent of Colorado Latinos are likely Democratic voters, just 45 percent have a high probability of voting in November. What about the Latino voters who favor the Democrats or are persuadable, but have lower probabilities of voting (the blue-shaded cells)? If these voters were mobilized in response to executive action, then the pool of potential Latinos voting Democratically would more than double. Absent executive action, there may be little incentive for these voters to participate in November.

At the other end of the spectrum is Arkansas; a state with a fraction of the number of registered Latinos as Colorado (see Table 3). Note that roughly half of Arkansas Latinos are independents. As a consequence, less than 20 percent of the Latino electorate has a high probability of voting Democratic a number that could be potentially increased twofold if Latino voters in the blue cells were mobilized.

Although North Carolina (Table 4) is home to a growing Latino voting population, just 10percent of these voters have a high probability of voting Democratic in November a total that is close to the share of Latinos who are predicted to vote Republican. To be sure, there are significantly more Democratic leaning or persuadable Latino voters (the blue cells) than Republicans in North Carolina. The lack of executive action coupled with Democratic Sen.Kay Hagans statements urging Obama not to act may give these voters little reason to participate in November.

The contours of Latino participation for the three other statesGeorgia, Kansas, and Michiganare similar to North Carolina. With the exception of Georgia, likely Democrats and those who might be persuaded to vote Democratic far outnumber likely Republicans. Among Latinos with a high probability of voting, the gap narrows considerably and in Georgia our model predicts more Republican than Democratic high probability voters.

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Monkey Cage: Will Obamas delay on immigration cost the Democrats votes among Latinos?

Job growth and immigration reform are among the issues in the race for the 11th Congressional District.

State Rep. Darlene Senger, R-Naperville, is challenging U.S. Rep. Bill Foster, D-Naperville, for Illinois 11th Congressional District seat. The 11th District includes North Aurora, Aurora, Naperville, Lisle and Joliet.

Senger has been a state representative since 2009. Before that, she was on the Naperville City Council from 2002 to 2008.

Foster has held the seat since November 2012 after defeating former U.S. Rep. Judy Biggert. From 2008 to 2011, Foster represented Illinois 14th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives. He was defeated for the seat by then-state Sen. Randy Hultgren, R-Winfield.

Senger said she is concerned about Illinois lackluster job growth.

I want to get back to the day where we have good policies in place to create not just more jobs, but quality jobs and jobs with opportunities, Senger said. I feel bad for the kids in college. They have big college loans, but there is nothing for them when they get out.

She said government overregulation has helped to dampen job growth.

Weve created 25 percent more regulations since 2008 than we ever have in the history of our country, Senger said. It is doing nothing but stifling and choking off opportunities that we could put in place.

As a businessman, Foster said he understands the needs of business owners, including the nations tax code needs to be simplified. Foster said he started a company with his brother that now manufactures more than half of the theater lighting equipment in the United States.

Foster said in order to continue growing the regions economy, we need to invest in advanced manufacturing technologies and training in order to prepare our children to compete in a global workforce.

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Jobs, immigration among issues in 11th Congressional District race

Republicans will commit political suicide if they fail to pass immigration reform, President Obama saidThursdayduring a town hall meeting in Los Angeles.

It's anybody's guess how Republicans are thinking about this, Obama said. If they were thinking long-term politically, it is suicide for them not to do this.

At the same time, Obama said, the Tea Party and others who often express virulent opposition to immigration reform are making Republican lawmakers reluctant.

Still, the president predicted that immigration reform would pass Congress before the end of his presidency.

Congress will see the light because the logic of it is too compelling, Obama said. "I'm going to keep fighting on this.

Despite his optimism that Congress would pass comprehensive immigration reform, Obama reiterated his pledge to take executive action on immigration in the period between the midterm elections and the end of the year. The president has said he's taking those steps because House Republicans failed to move on a bipartisan Senate immigration bill.

On Thursday, Obama hinted that one executive action he was contemplating would expand the H1-B visa program, which allows skilled immigrants to come to the U.S. to work. Corporate supporters of immigration reform have suggested Obama could extend work permits to the dependents of all current H1-B holders in a way that they would not count against existing caps, freeing up more visas for foreign workers.

Still, Obama warned, whatever I do through the executive branch will not be as effective as comprehensive immigration reform passed by Congress.

Link:
Obama: 'It is suicide' for GOP to not do immigration reform

White House press secretary Josh Earnest gestures as he answers a question during the daily press briefing at the White House in Washington, Wednesday, Oct. 8, 2014. (Associated Press) more >

The White House said Wednesday that President Obama delayed his decision on immigration reform until after the midterm elections because he didnt want Republicans to win on the issue and become emboldened by it.

The concern is that, had the president moved forward with his announcement prior to Election Day, you would have seen Republican candidates do more to make the immigration issue central to their campaign, said White House press secretary Josh Earnest. And in the event that they were successful in their campaign, the concern would be that they would cite their opposition to immigration reform as a reason for their success.

He added, That is not a storyline that the president wanted, or that anybody here wanted to contribute to.

Mr. Earnests explanation went a bit beyond previous justifications for the delay, which were mainly that Mr. Obama didnt want to inject the subject into a partisan election.

The president is expected to take executive action in the lame-duck session of Congress on immigration, likely to include a broadening of deportation waivers for some of the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants.

Mr. Earnest said the White House believes the vast majority of congressional races wont be swayed by candidates who oppose immigration reform.

But he said the presidents decision to postpone an announcement was less an issue about trying to dictate or influence the outcome of the elections and more about making sure that the immigration issue is not a casualty of the post-election political analysis.

Thats the that is a complicated case to make, but it is important to protecting the political viability of an issue that the president thinks is a top domestic priority, and thats immigration reform, he said.

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White House: Obama doesn't want immigration reform to be 'casualty' of election

When the summer began, President Obama had said that he was directing his advisers tocome up with a list of actions he could take on immigrationthat would not require the approval of Congress. This step had beenrumored for some time,having been hinted about by administration officials, and was believed to include consideration of measures such as expanding the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that the president had announced two years earlier. As the summer wore on, though, reports circulated that many Democrats running for reelection in red states wereurging the administration to delay action until after the electionfor fear that anything announced before then would doom their campaigns. Last month, President Obama did in factannounce that there would be no action taken before the election, an action for which he received a lot of criticism from Latino organizations and immigration rights groups, Since that announcement, the underlying assumption has been that we would indeed see some kind of action from the president after the election, perhaps during the lame-duck period before the new Congress takes office. Matt Yglesias, though, seems pretty convinced that the administration may punt on the issue again, depending on the outcome of the elections:

President Barack Obamasaysthat after the midterm election hes going to use his executive authority to create a fairly broadde factoamnesty program for many undocumented migrants living in the United States.

Im just not sure I believe him.

Not that I doubt the presidents sincerity. I havent gazed into his soul on the subject, but the best read I have on White House officials is that they genuinely believe that they are going to do this. I just think they may be mistaken about their own likely behavior. Especially if Republicans take the Senate which seems likely its easy for me to imagine that they will look around at the new November landscape and have a change of heart.

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Even if Republicans take the Senate, they still cantstop Obama from following through on his promise. Butas Brian Beutler writes, if the GOP takes the Senate theyll be position to place executive amnesty at the center of proximate fights over funding the government and increasing the debt limit. And the basic dynamic where Democratic Senators from states with low Latino populations arent eager to have a huge throwdown over the issue would remain in place. The odds of the White House losing its nerve as part of a strategy to hold the party together in sure-to-be-grueling battles with congressional Republicans seem high.

Further reducing the odds that Obama will plow ahead in the face of a bad election result is the relative silence of Hillary Clinton on the issue. If Democrats were having a normal 2016 presidential primary, youd expect to see leading contenders out there making statements about their hope that the president will deliver for immigrants. But Clinton, not facing any robust opposition, is so far mostlydodging questions from immigrant activistsand talking about the need to elect more Democrats. If activists dont have the leverage to get a clear statement of support out of a presidential candidate, it seems unlikely that they really have the muscle to force the White House to act if the political climate is unfavorable.

Such a move would, of course, be incredibly disappointing to Latino voters and immigration activists, and with the 2016 election approaching soon after the midterms, it seems inconceivable, at first glance, that the president would throw this group of voters completely under the bus after having dangled the promise of some kind of action in front of them for the better part of a year. If nothing else, such a move would risk damaging Democratic Party fortunes going forward not so much because these voters would suddenly switch loyalty to the GOP, but because they would be likely to just stay home on Election Day and become less active in campaigns. This would do as much harm to the partys fortunes as voting for the opposing party, if not more. Looking at this purely from the perspective of partisan politics, then, it seems inconceivable that the president would do something that would clearly be seen as a slap in the face to an important and growing constituency, and an important part of the Democratic coalition.

That being said, I believe that Yglesias is on to something when he argues that a Republican victory in November is likely to spook the president into either scaling back the executive action that was planned to make it much more modest than it might otherwise have been, or to put it off altogether in favor of another push for immigration reform in the 114th Congress, which will likely not go anywhere. As he notes, in the context of a Congress fully controlled by Republicans, there will be tremendous pressure to delay action in order to get things like budgeting and other tasks needed to keep the government functioning. Even some Democrats are likely to be less than enthusiastic about the idea given the electoral price they could pay in the future. Finally, theres the simple fact that President Obama has backed down on this issue in the past, and that a plausible case can be made that immigration reform is not important enough an issue to tie up the federal budget or other operations of government.

So, if the GOP does win the Senate, dont be too surprised if we dont see any executive action at all or, if we do, that it is substantially more modest than previously hinted at.

See more here:
Why Obama may punt on executive action on immigration, even after the election