By JULIA PRESTON
The New York Times
April 20, 2011
With prospects for an immigration overhaul looking dim, President Obama is facing increasing pressure from Latinos, Democratic lawmakers and immigrant groups to use his executive powers to offer relief from deportation to broad groups of illegal immigrants.
Demands for immediate action by Mr. Obama to slow the pace of the immigration crackdown in Latino communities have not eased since a White House meeting on Tuesday in which the president gathered political, business and religious leaders to brainstorm about how to revive the overhaul legislation, which is stalled in Congress.
Latinos and Democrats praised Mr. Obama for trying to jump-start efforts to pass the bill, which would grant legal status to millions of illegal immigrants. But with many leaders of the Republican majority in the House of Representatives strongly opposed to the measure, the bill’s supporters remain skeptical that it will go anywhere before the presidential election next year.
They are calling on Mr. Obama to use authorities they say he already has under current immigration law to defer deportations of illegal immigrant students who would be eligible for legal status under a bill known as the Dream Act.
“We know that immigration reform is doable, but it is just rather difficult given the makeup of Congress,” said Representative Charlie Gonzalez, Democrat of Texas, who is chairman of the Hispanic Caucus in the House. “We are asking the president if he could provide some sort of relief to innocent people who are the most impacted by the inequities of the immigration system.”
Religious and civil rights groups have asked Mr. Obama to expand waivers that would make it easier for illegal immigrants who are immediate relatives of American citizens to fix their legal status without having to leave the United States.
Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, and 11 other lawmakers sent a letter asking the Obama administration to postpone deportations of immigrants in same-sex marriages with American citizens. The administration recently decided that it would no longer defend in the courts a law barring the federal government from recognizing those marriages.
Some Hispanic lawmakers, in the most ambitious demands, have said the president should halt deportations of illegal immigrants whose children are American citizens. An estimated four million young citizens have at least one parent who is an illegal immigrant.
Democrats are leaning on the White House as they look to the elections next year, when Latino voters could play pivotal roles in several crucial states. Under the Obama administration, immigration authorities have carried out record numbers of deportations, with nearly 400,000 immigrants removed in each of the last two years. The deportations are drawing increasingly irate protests from Latino communities.
But Republicans in Congress say the administration has not done enough to remove illegal immigrants, and they oppose any action by Mr. Obama that would offer what they call a “stealth amnesty.”
Mr. Obama “should not selectively enforce the law,” said Elton Gallegly, Republican of California, who is chairman of the House Judiciary immigration subcommittee. “Amnesty — whether universal or selective — only encourages illegal immigration.”
Administration officials said Mr. Obama had rejected any move that would appear to circumvent Congress, which could alienate the handful of Republicans who might be persuaded to join an effort to pass the overhaul legislation. The president told the White House meeting on Tuesday that he did not believe there were any shortcuts he could use to help illegal immigrants.
“At the end of the day, the president cannot fix administratively what is broken in the immigration system,” said a senior White House official, who was not authorized to speak publicly on the issue. The official said the White House had made a strategic decision to focus all its efforts on passing the overhaul rather than acting unilaterally to make smaller changes.
Mr. Obama first rejected executive action to suspend deportations during a town-hall-style meeting broadcast in late March on Univision, the Spanish-language television network.
But calls for him to change his mind have only multiplied since then. In a letter on April 13, the top two Democrats in the Senate, Harry Reid of Nevada and Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, and 20 other Democrats sent a letter asking the president to defer deportations of illegal immigrant students. The Dream Act bill passed the House but failed in the Senate last year.
Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, denounced the Democrats’ letter in a speech on the floor. “I’m just appalled that members of this body think an executive order to grant amnesty behind our backs is not an assault on the democratic process,” Mr. Grassley said.
Acting case by case, the immigration authorities suspended deportations of 34,448 immigrants last year, according to figures sent to Mr. Grassley by the Department of Homeland Security.
Representative Luis V. Gutierrez, Democrat of Illinois, a critic of the administration on immigration, is touring the country holding town-hall-style meetings in Latino communities to demand the suspension of deportation for hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/21/us/politics/21immigration.html
