Even before President Obama announced his executive action overhauling the nation’s immigration system, the all-too-predictable Republican backlash was already in high gear. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tx.) accused Obama of using “the tactics of a monarch,” soon-to-be Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) compared acting on immigration reform to “waving a red flag in front of a bull,” and House Speaker John Boehner (R-Oh.) refused to rule out a lawsuit against the president. And after Obama’s announcement on Thursday, the complaints kept pouring in. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindall described the executive action as a “temper tantrum,” House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Ca.) called it a “brazen power grab,” and Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) went so far as to say impeachment is “still on the table.”
So what is the executive action that has inspired so much backlash on the right? It shields up to 5 millions people who are in America illegally from deportation, and will allow about 4 million to work legally. The executive action does not offer these people a path to citizenship or make them eligible for health insurance subsidies under the Affordable Care Act. Even so, critics like David Brooks argue that the move will “further destabilize the legitimacy of government.” This argument ignores the fact that Obama’s move is not without precedent. In fact, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush have all issued similar executive actions granting various groups immunity from deportation. And previous Supreme Court rulings also lend Obama’s action legitimacy. For example, in United States vs. Nixon, the Supreme Court ruled that “the Executive Branch has exclusive authority and absolute discretion to decide whether to prosecute a case.”
If anything, the order should have been made sooner. Obama delayed acting on immigration during the midterm elections for fear of hurting vulnerable Democrats like Sen. Kay Hagan (D-N.C.) and Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.). But this prompted backlash from immigration activists like Janet Murguía, president of the National Council of La Raza, who described Obama as the “deporter-in-chief.” And Hagan and Pryor, along with five other Democratic incumbents, still managed to lose on election day, showing that Democrats can’t win by out-Republican-ing the Republicans. Obama’s executive action may cement opposition to Democrats from many white middle-class voters, but, as the midterm elections showed, those voters don’t vote for Democrats anyway.
What the immigration action does do is boost Democrats’ prospects among the diverse coalition of voters that elected Obama in 2012 and that Democrats will be counting on in 2016, especially Latinos. As the national immigration debate continues to shift in the Democrats’ favor, Republicans are moving further and further away from where most Americans stand on the issue.
Complaints like McConnell’s – that Obama is erasing any chance he had to work with the newly Republican Senate – fall flat. To think that Republicans were just dying to pass immigration reform if only Obama reached out to them ignores the fact that Obama has repeatedly tried to reach across the aisle on immigration reform, offering broad concessions on border security. To what end? In June, Boehner told the president, “The American people and their elected officials don’t trust him to enforce the law as written. Until that changes, it is going to be difficult to make progress on this issue.” So it’s not as if immigration reform was going to happen if only Obama just waited a little longer. In the end, it looks like Republicans, not Obama, will pay the price for their refusal to come to the table on immigration.