Congress can’t defund immigration order

Congress can’t use spending bills to defund the main agency that would carry out President Barack Obama’s immigration order, a House committee aide said, complicating Republicans’ plans to block executive action by choking off funds.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services pays for itself by collecting fees and thus can expand operations under a presidential order without Congress’s approval, said Jennifer Hing, communications director for the Appropriations Committee in the Republican-led House, in an emailed statement.

The statement came as Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said Republicans are “considering a variety of options. But make no mistake. When the newly elected representative of the people take their seats, they will act.”

Hing said in an emailed statement Thursday the immigration agency can “collect and use fees to continue current operations, and to expand operations as under a new executive order,” without approval from Congress.

Obama’s unilateral action, circumventing a deadlocked Congress, promises to remove the immediate risk of deportation for 4 million to 5 million undocumented immigrants and initiate a showdown with congressional Republicans.

The debate may set battle lines for the 2016 presidential campaign and shape the political loyalties of fast-growing ethnic groups for years to come.

The president said the reprieve would affect as many as 5 million people and he explained who would qualify and who wouldn’t. He also described other provisions including border security enhancements, according to a person familiar with the meeting who asked for anonymity.

“He’s taking a good first step in the right direction,” Rep. Linda Sanchez, a California Democrat, told CNN Thursday. Congress still needs to “fix this problem in a long-term way” by passing comprehensive immigration reform, said Sanchez, chairwoman-elect of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

Republican congressional leaders say the president is exceeding his authority. They are searching for a response to Obama that satisfies their rank-and-file lawmakers, while avoiding a shutdown of the federal government that could hurt the party’s image.

House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio is fielding demands that include suing the president, censuring him, threatening to cut off government funding.

Obama and Democrats would reap the political benefits of another government shutdown, said Oklahoma Rep. Tom Cole, a Boehner ally.

“We have every right to be mad. But when you’re upset and mad, doing what the person that provoked you wants you to do is usually not a very smart way to go,” Cole told reporters. “The smart thing is to find another way to deal with the president, because he’s trying to pick a bar fight.”

Deportation protection

Between 4 million and 5 million undocumented immigrants will be protected from deportation for the rest of Obama’s presidency. That exceeds the nearly 2.7 million given permanent legal status by the 1986 immigration law signed by Republican President Ronald Reagan.

The bipartisan Senate legislation that stalled in the House would have initially granted legal status to 8 million immigrants in the country illegally, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office.

Obama’s executive action would give temporary visas to undocumented immigrants whose children were born in the U.S., according to people familiar with the proposal. It would expand eligibility for his 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that has given protection to 600,000 child immigrants.

The planned action, which the White House says is a partial fix for the U.S. immigration system, may improve Obama’s standing with Hispanic voters after he presided over a record number of deportations. It may damage his chances of working with Republicans in Congress on other issues.

Parents, children

The idea behind his strategy is to cover categories of immigrants that would be politically difficult for Republicans to oppose, because that would involve separating parents from their children, according to a Democratic aide familiar with the matter.

Ana Navarro, former chief Hispanic adviser to Arizona Sen. John McCain, said Republicans “need to resist the urge of taking their toys and going home from the playground because Obama stuck his tongue out at them.” A fight over keeping parents with their children won’t be a winning political argument for Republicans, she said.

By centering his plan on family unification, Obama is seeking to drive a wedge in the Republican Party, which includes lawmakers who support what the president is doing even if they oppose his use of presidential powers to achieve it.

Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, said Obama was abusing his power and should have worked more with Republicans.

‘Abused’ authority

“There is nobody who’s abused the authority to issue executive orders more than the current occupant of the White House,” Cornyn said. Obama is undermining Republican support for “common-sense immigration bills,” he said.

A group of at least 60 House Republicans is pushing to use a government funding bill to deny the president the money needed to implement his plan.

Even some of the most outspoken critics of Obama’s immigration stance expressed caution over risking a federal shutdown in order to reprimand him.

Congress must approve funds by Dec. 11 to keep the government open or trigger an interruption similar to last year, when Republican demands to defund the president’s health-care law led to a 16-day partial shutdown.

Obama disapproval

Iowa Rep. Steve King, who once called for an electric fence along the U.S.-Mexico border, said Wednesday he wants legislation expressing disapproval of Obama’s actions or to censure him before considering a fight over funding.

“I only want to do the minimum — the minimum — to put the president back in his constitutional boundaries,” said King.

Earlier, Boehner and his allies said they’re reviewing alternatives to using a funding bill to fight the executive action, including retroactively canceling money in 2015 for any action taken by Obama.

In an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released this week, 48 percent of Americans oppose Obama taking executive action on immigration while 38 percent support it. About 14 percent have no opinion or are unsure. The poll was conducted Nov. 14-17 and has a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points.

Work permits

Obama will also expand a program that gives work permits for up to 29 months to foreign graduates of U.S. universities with degrees in science, technology, engineering and math. That provides more workers to fill high-tech jobs.

The administration already broadened eligibility for the program in 2012 by increasing the qualifying fields of study.

The executive action will include enforcement measures and changes to legal-immigration procedures, the people said.

Obama is expected to stop short of including the parents of children brought to the U.S. illegally, called dreamers, the people said. Senate Democrats were pressing the White House to cover this group under the current plan.

Still, a White House official said about half of those parents would be covered by other criteria.

Republicans aren’t united on the immigration issue. Some say the party must take steps to ease its stance against undocumented immigrants while others consider them lawbreakers who don’t deserve what many of them label amnesty.

National demographic shifts, particularly in competitive states such as Nevada and Florida, make the support of Hispanic voters important to both political parties.

With assistance from Jonathan Allen and Kathleen Hunter in Washington, Esme E. Deprez in New York and Christopher Palmeri in Los Angeles.