Barack Obama’s decision to put his immigration reform programme on hold is a bitter disappointment to millions of the undocumented across the US, Mexicans and countless Latinos and Irish alike. The forced deportations continue apace – 368,644 last year – and several thousand more will follow them between now and the mid-term elections in November, after which he has promised to re-engage with the issue.
Obama’s problem is the same it has been throughout his two terms, congressional gridlock and a hardline, Tea Party-dominated Republican majority in the House which is deeply hostile to easing restrictions on immigration despite the reality that this may yet scupper its presidential hopes for 2016. After the 2012 presidential election, when Republicans received a paltry 27 per cent of the Hispanic vote they talked publicly of the need they needed to re-evaluate their hard line. But such a re-evaluation has been distinctly half-hearted, particularly in the House. Unlikely to dislodge its majority, Obama is desperate to maintain the three-seat Democratic majority in the Senate.
Frustrated by the defeat in the House of a bill agreed by the Senate last year to provide a “path to citizenship” for illegal migrants, the president had promised to push measures through by executive order that would allow five to ten million of them to work in the US, a measure certain to enrage Congress and certainly put that Senate majority in doubt. Some Democrats also warned that the move would jeopardise any future attempt to reach a bipartisan accord on moving forward on the issue. And, at stake then, would be more than immigration reform as a Republican Senate would also try to dismantle his landmark healthcare reform .
Vulnerable Democrats in states like Louisiana, Arkansas, Alaska, and North Carolina, have successfully pressed him to hold back on the immigration issue until after the elections. His retreat has a price, however, it has been met by howls of rage from the immigration lobby denouncing what it sees as another all-too-typical Obama retreat. The president’s pragmatic defence that it is a step back to get a better run at the issue later makes poor “legacy” material.