White House is trying to dial down the Immigration issue

The White House is trying to dial down the partisan rhetoric on immigration — and it’s asking its allies to do the same.
In meetings with immigration reform advocates, White House officials have said President Barack Obama won’t threaten to take unilateral executive action — at least not yet — and that he wants to give House Republicans some breathing room to try to pass legislation this year, said immigration advocates who have participated in the sessions
While Obama is blaming Republicans for blocking the rest of his domestic agenda, and congressional Democrats see immigration as a winning 2014 issue for them if Republicans are seen as the boogeymen responsible for blocking reform efforts, activists in touch with the White House said Obama won’t use his bully pulpit to embarrass or chasten the GOP on immigration. That includes Obama’s State of the Union address next Tuesday.
“You’re not going to see the president talking critically or negatively about Republicans on an issue like this when he wants to see this happen,” said Jim Wallis, president of the Christian social-justice organization Sojourners. “They’re not looking for conflict here, they are looking for cooperation and collaboration.”
The president has softened his language of late. He went from demanding the House pass the Senate’s comprehensive bill to saying at a pre-Christmas news conference that it was “a concept that has bipartisan support. Let’s see if we can break through the politics on this.” Before a Cabinet meeting last week, Obama issued a vanilla reminder that “we know that we need to get immigration reform done — a major piece of unfinished business from last year.” Obama also discussed immigration reform during his Wednesday night session with Senate Democrats, according to the White House.
“I’m not getting the sense that they are going to spend half the speech on this,” Ali Noorani, the executive director of the National Immigration Forum, said of the White House. “What we’re looking for in the State of the Union is quality and not quantity.”
A White House official declined to discuss the details of the State of the Union address but said Obama will give House Republicans time and space to reach an immigration solution. “We’re focused more on the result and less about the process,” the official said. “If they have to jump through a series of hoops, we’re happy to let the House work its will.”
House Republicans have pledged to issue long-awaited principles on immigration in the coming weeks that would lay out their alternative to the comprehensive reform bill the Senate passed in June. A key sticking point between the forthcoming House GOP principles and the White House and immigration reformers will be placing undocumented immigrants on a path to legal status, rather than citizenship, according to people briefed on the discussions.
Meanwhile, unlike other issues in which Obama is threatening to use executive actions, White House officials are telling immigration activists what the president has been saying publicly for months: Sit tight and stick with us, because there will be no executive action to stop the record number of deportations that has enraged Obama’s more liberal critics.
“We’ve said the same thing privately that we’ve said publicly,” White House spokesman Bobby Whithorne said. “The administration will continue to enforce the law and pursue meaningful legislative reform. The only way to effectively address these concerns to reform the system is for Congress to pass common-sense immigration reform.”
Republicans remain skeptical of the White House approach.
“Playing nice has not been a hallmark of this administration,” said Brendan Buck, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio). “But if we’re going to solve our immigration challenges, the White House and its allies will have to understand that the House is going to take its time and get this done the right way.”
The immigration reformers that deal directly with the White House remain hopeful the president will take unilateral action if it becomes clear there will be no congressional solution.
“As far as I’m concerned, we have the next five months to get something done, and if nothing gets done, it will be an issue that needs to be addressed by the president,” said Eliseo Medina, the longtime union activist who organized the Fast for Families tents outside the Capitol late last year.
“We are not just going to be waiting for a legislation in order to make sure that we’re providing Americans the kind of help that they need,” Obama said. “I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a phone — and I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive actions and administrative actions that move the ball forward.”

The White House and allies maintain Obama’s unilateral action on economic matters doesn’t preclude him from seeking cooperation on immigration. The stance on slowing deportations is roughly the same as it was before Obama announced deferred action for DREAMers in 2012 — outside his legal authority. Politically, doing so would torpedo any chance to get cooperation from congressional Republicans who, after witnessing a host of administrative changes to Obamacare, fear the president would try to alter whatever immigration law passes.

“They seem interested in signaling that if Congress doesn’t act, the president will,” Frank Sharry, the executive director of America’s Voice, said of the White House. “On immigration, that’s much more complicated, and they’ve been straining to say, ‘We’re not going to do anything, we don’t have the authority to do anything more.’ If he signals the willingness to do executive authority, it might turn them off.”
Just because immigration-minded groups are not hammering Republicans now does not mean they are disarming. The National Council of La Raza on Thursday is launching an effort to register 250,000 Latino voters in states “where there is potential to advance the national dialogue on issues important to Latinos, such as immigration reform,” the group said Monday.
Obama’s GOP allies on immigration reform are gearing up for their own campaign to back House action. Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who was once a Republican, is hosting an immigration forum Friday in Washington with Michigan’s GOP Gov. Rick Snyder, former Bush administration Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez and Chamber of Commerce Senior Vice President Randy Johnson.
Obama, said Jeremy Robbins, the director of Bloomberg’s Partnership for a New American Economy, is working hard to foster cooperative working relationships on immigration, even if White House officials aren’t directly involved in the intra-GOP talks.
“There’s a lot of mistrust, and he has to be careful that he doesn’t set the process back; they’ve been really cognizant of that,” Robbins said.
Obama can offer Republicans an olive branch on immigration without offering any new agenda, Sharry said, by reiterating his willingness to endorse the piecemeal agenda House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) seeks.
“It’s a sign of flexibility without giving away anything,” Sharry said.
Explicitly backing a House piecemeal approach would allow Obama to advance the cause of reform without discussing executive actions to slow deportations demanded by his progressive base.
Obama faced down an anti-deportation heckler at a San Francisco event in November, and last month, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) — Obama’s strongest House ally — said during a Univision interview she doesn’t “see any reason for these deportations.”


Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2014/0...#ixzz2r8uSzZl1

Yea it could get ugly if we let Fox take over the debate. We really need to dial it down and focus on the key elements that helped health care reform, it's been so long I barely remember...