Obama Will Confront Congress on Immigration after the November 4 Election

President Obama's approach to governing - talk a lot and do very little - has caught up with him on a hot-button issue that may cost Democrats some of the votes they had counted on for the November 4 midterm election. Embattled Democrats are facing a "fierce voter backlash from disillusioned Latinos," The Los Angeles Times reports. Democratic candidates hope that Latinos, whose voting impact is rapidly growing, will come out in force on November 4 as party leaders cling to the fading hope of continuing to control the Senate, while at least maintaining the minority of seats they now hold in the House -- and thus prevent a GOP sweep in two weeks. But the Times notes that Latino voters don't come out full force for midterm elections, which could be compounded by the disappointment they feel over President Obama's policies, particularly on immigration. "Obama promised too much and never delivered," Jose Trujillo, 44, told the LA Times outside a church in Georgia, which has one of the tightest Senate races in the country. Clara Puerta, publisher of a Spanish-language newspaper, El Nuevo Georgia, also slammed the President, who was dubbed the "deporter in chief" by the National Council of La Raza President Janet Murguia earlier this year. "Obama has not responded to our community," said Puerta, who volunteers for Georgia's Democratic Party. "He promised us a lot of things and has not followed through. A lot of people are upset and they don't want to vote." ~~~~~ What could be the impact if Latino voters stay home? In the 2012 presidential election, California, Nevada, and Colorado turned from red (GOP) to blue (Democrat), when Latinos voted for Obama in record numbers. Since then, however, Obama has angered Latinos by failing to carry through on his repeated vow to push through a comprehensive immigration package. "All the air has been let out," according to Matt Barreto, a University of Washington political scientist who takes major polls on US Latinos. He told the LA Times that his surveys show that Latinos could swing the vote in nearly 40 races, including House elections in San Diego and Sacramento, Senate contests in Colorado and Georgia, and gubernatorial races in Arizona, Florida, and Illinois -- depending on whether or not large numbers of Latinos go to the polls to vote for Democratic candidates. Meanwhile, Republicans are taking advantage of the Latino dissatisfaction with Obama by building an outreach program centered on 10 states, including California, Arizona, Colorado, and Florida, where GOP operatives hope to secure the votes of Latino groups, especially social conservatives and small-business owners, according to the Times. ~~~~~ And Latinos aren't the only Americans angry wirh President Obama. Some lawmakers predict a sweeping executive order on immigration from President Obama after the November 4 elections, and the US Citizenship and Immigration Services is already planning to hire a vendor to produce up to 34 million blank green cards to accommodate an expected surge in immigrants in 2016. The USCIS has published a draft solicitation for a contractor capable of producing 4 million cards a year for five years - and 9 million in the early stages - that would allow immigrants to live and work in the US, Breitbart reports. One estimate is that 34 million cards will be printed. Hedging, an official from USCIS told MailOnline on Monday that a plan was developed "in case the President makes the move we think he will," even though the agency's Document Management Division isn't yet committing to buying the materials. Another official said that the plan is only a "contingency" in case immigration reform legislation passes in Congress, stressing that it wasn't in anticipation of an Obama executive order. The President, whose plan was rebuffed by Congress, has vowed to do as much as he can by executive order. Republicans have called the Obama plan an "amnesty" for millions of illegal immigrants, including hundreds of thousands of unaccompanied minors who poured into the United States through the southern border with Mexico this summer, and who continue to flood across America's southern border, with an estimated 90,000 due to arrive by year end. ~~~~~ The executive order timetable has been shifted until after the crucial midterm elections. The latest draft solicitation "seems to indicate that the President is contemplating an enormous executive action that is even more expansive than the plan that Congress rejected," according to Jessica Vaughn, an immigration expert at the Center for Immigration Studies, who told Breitbart the green cards - officially known as Permanent Residency Cards and Employment Authorization Documentation cards - are used for participants in Obama's controversial Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Known as "DREAMers," the program's participants came to the United States illegally as children. A total of 862,000 people have been approved for such documentation by USCIS through June. But according to the draft solicitation, "the guaranteed minimum for each ordering period is 4,000,000 cards, with the estimated maximum for the entire contract set at 34,000,000 cards." Last July, Newsmax reported about a proposal supported by some Democratic Senators that would expand Obama's plan to include immigrants who are parents of US citizens, which would mean protecting 4.4 million adults from deportation, according to a January report by the National Foundation for American Policy, a Virginia-based immigration research group. Another proposal would also include the parents of immigrants who arrived as children. New York Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer, the Senate’s No. 3 Democrat, has called for a halt to deportations for a larger group of immigrants, covering all those who would be allowed to stay under the Obama-backed immigration legislation that the Senate passed last year. That measure, opposed by House Republican leaders, would create a path to citizenship for many of the 12 million undocumented workers in the US. ~~~~~ Dear readers, on CNN "Inside Politics" Monday, moderator John King said the unilateral executive action promised by Obama after the midterm elections will result in confrontation, not compromise, from Republicans angry and frustrated. King commented :"Well, if you believed perhaps there would be room and motivation for a deal after the 2014 midterms - think again. I was so struck by conversations in Colorado, in Kansas and Iowa - just pure frustration; a belief among conservative Republicans that this problem is getting worse. What does that tell you? It tells you there is no prospect for any compromise legislation during the final two years of the Obama presidency," King said, adding : "If the President uses his executive power, Republicans will be pushing for confrontation, not compromise." So, since there is little doubt that Obama is determined to take action and is bent on granting as many green cards as possible, and with Republicans demanding that their leaders stand firm against compromise, the future seems to hold a major confrontation on the immigration issue after November 4 as America heads into the 2016 presidential campaign.