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President Obama on Thursday night gave himself a concrete timetable to take executive action on immigration reform, vowing to act between the November midterm elections and the end of the year.

Mr. Obamas promise was met with cheers and applause at a Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute dinner in Washington. Hispanic leaders have been eagerly waiting on the White House to take executive steps to stop deportations for more illegal immigrants, as it now is certain the House will not act on a comprehensive immigration reform bill before the end of the year.

This is not a question of if but when. Because the moment I act and it will be taking place between the November elections and the end of the year opponents of reform will roll out the same old scare tactics, the president said.

The administration previously had indicated the president would act over the summer, and the delay was met with anger and frustration from Hispanic lawmakers on Capitol Hill and across the country.

But even though hes promised to act during the lame-duck session of Congress, Mr. Obama stressed that the fight for immigration will not end. He said more sustainable action will be needed to ensure any changes made to the nations immigration system can stand the test of time.

We have to be realistic. For any action to last, for it to be effective and extend beyond my administration because Im only here two more years were going to have to build more support of the American people so it is sustainable and lasting, he said. So I am going to be spending the next month, six weeks, eight weeks, not just talking about what weve done for the economy, but explaining why immigration reform is good for our economy and why its good for everybody.

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Obama sets firm timetable on immigration reform

Immigration reform groups march outside the White House calling on President Obama for immigration reform and to stop deportations on July 16. Photo By Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call

At the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institutes annual gala, Obama warned activists that his eventual actions will spark intense political opposition that could threaten the durability of what he does. In a partisan pitch a month before Election Day, he urged Hispanics across the U.S. to use their votes to improve prospects in the future for a legislative fix.

The moment I act and it will be taking place between the November election and the end of the year opponents of reform will roll out the same old scare tactics, Obama said. When opponents are out there saying who knows what, Im going to need you to have my back.

Once hailed as a champion for Hispanic rights, Obamas relationship with the Hispanic community has become strained since he decided last month to abandon his earlier pledge to act quickly after summers end to help some immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally. Instead, he said hed wait until after the Nov. 4 elections, exasperating immigration activists who accused the president of putting politics ahead of their families and said they had waited far too long already.

With the elections nearing, Obama sought to parlay impatience into motivation for Hispanic voters to elect politicians who will enact more sweeping reforms to fix the U.S. immigration system. Arguing that no executive action on immigration could be as comprehensive as what Congress could do, he urged Hispanics at the black-tie dinner to go into their communities to ensure voters dont stay home.

Yes we can if we vote, he said, first in Spanish and then in English, in a twist on his 2008 campaign slogan.

The White House has been coy about what unilateral actions Obama and his administration are considering, and legal experts differ about just how far Obama can go without Congress. Immigration activists are calling for Obama to act aggressively to free a sizeable portion of the 11.5 million immigrants here illegally from fear of deportation.

Such a possibility has incensed Republicans who say Obamas willingness to ignore existing laws is the key reason theyre reluctant to work with him to pass new ones.

The presidents promise isnt about making the best policy or enforcing the law its an admission that his pledge to not uphold the law in the future would be bad for his party now, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said.

A supportive crowd offered the president a mostly warm reception, although he was briefly interrupted by a heckler who objected to deportations on Obamas watch and was escorted out of the hall. Outside the convention center, a group of demonstrators gathered in protest of Obamas delay.

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Obama vows to act on immigration reform by end of year

President Obama said Thursday night that he would take executive action on immigration sometime between the midterm elections and the end of the year.

Speaking before the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute Gala, Obama said he shares the frustration of many in the room upset that immigration reform remains stalled. Obama was accompanied to the gala by two congressional interns who are DREAMers -- young unauthorized immigrantswho entered the United States before the age of 16.

"But if anybody wants to know where my heart is or whether I want to have this fight, let me put those questions to rest right now. I am not going to give up this fight until it gets done," Obama said. "I know the pain of families torn apart because we live with a system thats broken."

Obama laid blame squarely at the feet of congressional Republicans, who he said exploited a crisis of undocumented children at the southern border for political gain this summer and refuse to act with the president on immigration reform. However, he said, he ultimately needs Congress to pass an immigration law, because anything he does by executive action can be reversed by the next president.

"So the point I want to make is the progress weve made has been hard, sometimes it's been slower than we want, but that progress has been steady and it has been real," he said. "I want to make something clear: Fixing our broken immigration system is one more, big thing that we have to do and that we will do."

Now, Obama said, he will also use immigration as a political tool -- by explaining immigration reform is a boon for the economy.

"And when opponents are out there saying who knows what, I'm going to need you to have my back," he said.

Part of that, Obama said, is getting out in November and voting. Only 48 percent of voters turned out to vote in 2012, he said.

"So the clearest path to change is to change that number. Si, se puede si votamos. Yes we can if we vote.," he said.

And Obama said he needs them to continue to believe in him.

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Obama: Ill take executive action on immigration between the midterms and end of the year

Washington, DC - infoZine - Scripps Howard Foundation Wire - Kamarck and co-author Alexander Podkul coded 1,662 hopefuls for House seats, including incumbents, and analyzed the candidates based on their demographic information, their political faction and their positions on issues. The analysis of races spanned every state and excluded only candidates who didnt have to file with the Federal Elections Committee, third-party candidates and those who withdrew.

Presidential primaries have frequently been studied, but congressional primaries have been, until now, the ignored stepchild of the American political system, Kamarck said, adding that the key to understanding politics is knowing the factions at play.

This was a primary election about health care, Kamarck said. This issue remains every bit as polarized as it was at this time last year.

Democratic hopefuls took nuanced approaches to the issue. Most candidates on the left supported the law, about a quarter took what Kamarck called a mend it dont end it approach and about 37 percent didnt bring it up at all.

It was practically a prerequisite to pledge to fight it to the death, said political columnist Jill Lawrence of Republican candidates take on Obamacare. Lawrence and another political journalist, Walter Shapiro, did a second study looking at campaign narratives from dozens of competitive races across the country for the Brookings primaries project.

It almost seemed like they were sitting there with a thesaurus trying to find the worst word they could think of to describe it, Lawrence said.

Immigration reform was another boilerplate issue during the primaries, and most candidates took a position on it.

Republican candidates were more likely to have nuanced opinions of immigration, with 11 percent taking complicated positions, which according to the study means they may have supported a path to citizenship but opposed amnesty for undocumented workers.

About 43 percent of Republicans, almost uniformly tea partyers, opposed reform or argued exclusively for securing the border. Notably, the study said the majority of Republicans who won spots on the general-election ballot were opposed to immigration reform.

About half of the Democrats who ran for House seats supported comprehensive immigration reform outright and less than 1 percent were opposed. About 3 percent of Democrats had a complicated position. Forty-six percent of Democrats had no discernable position.

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2014 Primary Elections: They Were All About Obamacare and Immigration

Remember immigration reform? It was the biggest domestic policy topic for the past couple of years. Brief recap of major events: the Senate passed a bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform bill, the House pretended to consider taking it up for a while, and then it didnt, President Obama promised to take executive action to slow down deportations, and then he didnt. If you add up those two didnts, the sum total of legislative and executive action thats changed U.S. immigration policy in the past two years is zero. The result of immigration activists tireless work has been zero. Zeroes across the board.

Poor decisions have been made on this path to this overwhelming zeroness. The poorest and most predictablewas Speaker John Boehner stringing everyone along for a year about how his House might take up immigration reform, before deciding not to. The border crisis (remember that?) offered Boehner the final excuse to drop his plans, but even before that, there was a lot of pathetic muttering about how Obama couldnt be trusted to carry out the law because hes a tyrannical president. His excuses dont matter, really. The GOP has officially decided to be an anti-immigration party for the indefinite future, and President Obama should no longer feel concerned about poisoning the well on the legislative front by taking executive action.

Another poor decision was President Obamas. He promised to take executive action by the end of the summer, and then broke that promise in order to appease some crappy Democratic Senate candidates in red and purple states. Moreover, in breaking that promised, he offered a new pledge to take executive action on deportations after the midterms. This had the twin negative affects of depressing a key part of the Democratic base while leaving Republicans room to scream about his eventual plans.

The Washington Post reports today about how Obamas decision to delay may be hurting Democrats more than its helping. The most obvious way to determine this is to look at polls of Senate battleground races, where the Democrats are faring worse by the day. But heres some ground-level reporting, for the hell of it.

Activists in key states say it is increasingly difficult to register would-be Latino voters who would vote for Democrats because of unhappiness over the decision. Poll numbers for Obama and Democrats have also dropped farther among Hispanics than the population at large. One group has even launched a campaign against four Democratic senators who backed a GOP proposal to bar Obama from taking any executive action on immigration.

The president has not helped us, said activist Leo Murietta, 28, who is working to register Latino voters in Colorado forMi Familia Vota. People are disappointed. They wanted action, they wanted activity, they wanted movement.

President Obama, sensing that he cant take immigration activists for granted, will be speaking at a Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute gala tonight. Buzzfeed reports that he will reaffirm his promise of administrative actions to slow record deportations before the end of the year, although thats hardly set in stone. The White House has pushed back against a Buzzfeeds reporting that Obama will call on [Latinos in attendance] to stick with him and wait 40 more days.

Theres another slim but horrifying prospect, as Voxs Dara Lind writes. That Obama could fall for Boehners trap again. Boehner, as Lind notes, has been saying in recent interviews that theres absolutely a chance that the House could take up immigration reform next year but only if Obama reneges on executive action. Obama, of course, would prefer a legislative solution to immigration problems over an executive one, and so it will be tempting to once again delay action in order to give Congress more space to work things out on its own.

Youre laughing, right? You should be laughing. Hopefully President Obama isnt falling for it again. Were too far along in this administration for this sort of thing. The Republican House and (likely) Republican Senate are not going to pass bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform with anything resembling legal status for undocumented immigrants next year, and any murmuring about the possibility of that is simply John Boehner trying to manipulate the Democrats into not pursuing whats in its interest. Whats in the Democratic partys interest is to secure a key and growing part of its base Hispanics with results, however it can, over and over, until Republicans are forced to accept its demographic disadvantage and come to the table for a legislative deal.

That wont happen in the Obama presidency. His legacy will never include bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform. His legacy could, however, include serious executive action that lifts the threat of deportation for millions of families. It would be the proper and humane policy, and it would put more heat on the Republican party, eventually, to reinvent itself.

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Boehner springs another lame trap: Why Obama must ignore his latest overtures about immigration