Obama seeks to build Congress support for US immigration changes

WASHINGTON - The US Senate Republican leader warned President Barack Obama on Thursday that he will have a fight on his hands if he goes ahead with a sweeping program to ease the threat of deportations for millions of undocumented immigrants.
 
Obama, in a speech to be broadcast at 8 p.m. ET (0100 GMT), is set to lay out plans for using his executive authority in ways that could allow as many as 5 million undocumented people to come out of the shadows and into American society.
 
For months, Obama has warned he would take the steps after Republicans in the House of Representatives blocked a comprehensive, bipartisan immigration bill passed by the Senate in 2013.
 
"If President Obama acts in defiance of the people and imposes his will on the country, Congress will act," Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said in a speech on the Senate floor.
 
McConnell did not provide details.
 
Among the steps Obama is expected to take, according to sources familiar with the administration's deliberations, are suspending deportation threats to some undocumented parents of US citizens and permanent legal residents, adding new border security controls and expanding a 2012 program that gave relief to those brought into the United States illegally by their parents when they were children.
 
In the run-up to his speech, Obama is dispatching his chief of staff, Denis McDonough, to Capitol Hill for lunch with Senate Democrats who are expected to grill him on the politics and policy behind his single-handed move.
 
Over a dozen House and Senate Democrats dined with Obama Wednesday night to discuss immigration reform.
 
Democratic senators from conservative states had already begun voicing concerns about Obama's upcoming action. Two weeks ago, several of their Senate colleagues were defeated in elections that saw Republicans pick up seats in the Senate and House.
 
The president will need the support of Democratic lawmakers to fend off Republican attempts, either next month or next year, to pass legislation undercutting the executive action.
 
Both McConnell and House Speaker John Boehner have warned Obama in stark terms against taking the executive action. Boehner went so far as to say Obama would be "playing with fire" if he went ahead.
 
Republican leaders are strategizing on ways to counter Obama and have been focusing on denying funding to federal workers who would administer the immigration changes.
 
Some Republican aides have pointed out, however, that the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) will mainly implement Obama's order and that it is entirely funded through fees it collects from various immigration applications.
 
House Republicans run the risk of staging another government shutdown fight if they attach a measure to a spending bill that must pass by Dec. 11.
 
That is when funding for many agencies expires. Senate Democrats are unlikely to go along with such a provision and that could delay passage of any spending bill by the Dec. 11 deadline, setting up a possible government shutdown.
 
Republicans also know they have to walk a fine line between opposing Obama's "amnesty" program for illegal immigrants and further alienating the increasingly important Hispanic vote before the 2016 presidential elections. — Reuters

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