NY Magazine: Republicans Hand Obama an Immigration Political Triumph

Immediately after the election, when John Boehner asked Obama to hold off on unilateral action, reporters asked if he would promise to bring an immigration bill to the House floor. He refused. A senior administration official pinpointed this as the moment when any chance of delay ended. For all the drama surrounding President Obama’s announcement that he would ease immigration enforcement, the decision was always a very easy one to make. It was not even a decision Obama made so much as one that was made for him. Nor was the choice especially difficult to grapple with. The humanitarian and political logic all point in the same direction.

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This rather mild form of vengeance, though, is probably not what furious tea partiers have in mind. And here is where Obama’s announcement will leave its deepest imprint. The emotional momentum in the Republican Party now falls to its most furious, deranged voices. Michele Bachmann has denounced what she calls “millions of unskilled, illiterate, foreign nationals coming into the United States who can’t speak the English language.” Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama has even presented the most sympathetic slice of the immigrant community — the ones serving in the military — as a source of insidious competition and even treason. (“I don’t want American citizens having to compete with illegal immigrants for jobs in our military … These individuals have to be absolutely 100 percent loyal and trustworthy.” Steve King, a regular font of nativist outbursts, is setting himself up as a power broker in Iowa, which will command center stage in the GOP primary for months and months on end.

This is the point of contrast that Obama drew out clearly and effectively. After years of legislative muddle, he was able to detach himself completely from Congress and articulate his own values. His remarks, met with rapt attention in immigrant communities, continued his rhetorical tradition of expanding the American family, accurately presenting himself (and, by extension, his party) as an ally to marginalized Americans. Speaking with evident passion, the president deemed the children of undocumented immigrants “as American as Malia or Sasha.” He cited scripture: “We shall not oppress a stranger, for we know the heart of a stranger — we were strangers once, too.” He drew an emotional bond between immigrant communities and the Democratic Party’s ideal of compassion and tolerance. That bond will be his announcement’s most enduring legacy.



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