The coming immigration fight

But now that he’s preparing a sweeping amnesty, giving up to 5 million adults the de facto right to stay here, GOP lawmakers are reluctantly gearing up to fight.

This battle will be very different from the skirmishes that took place in the wake of Obama’s executive order creating the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.

A souring public mood about arrivals at the southern border, combined with a broad executive order from Obama, is expected to trigger an aggressive blowback that could include getting the Supreme Court involved or risking a government shutdown.

“It’s so provocative, it smacks of a constitutional crisis,” an establishment House Republican who requested anonymity said of Obama’s plan.

Nearly two dozen House and Senate Republicans from all factions of the party agreed. Whether conference leader or Tea Party firebrand, immigration hawk or supporter of comprehensive reform, there was broad agreement among Republicans that Obama’s expected plan will require a tough, swift response.

That even included a Republican senator who voted for the bipartisan immigration reform bill in 2013.

“Our Founders didn’t want a king and the American people don’t want a president who acts like one,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee. “If the president were to do that and we have a Republican majority in the United States Senate, why, we have a number of options that we don’t now have to remind him to read Article I of the Constitution.”

A major reason why Republicans say they may take such steps is that they don’t have many options, a lesson they say they learned the hard way after Obama’s last executive action.

Obama announced changes to the deportation program in June 2012, in the middle of a presidential campaign, and congressional Republicans were leery of accepting the president’s invitation to fight on such a sensitive subject.

It wasn’t until the following June that the House voted on a mostly symbolic effort to defund the program, and it wasn’t until this August that it voted to reverse it.

With the Senate in Democratic hands, neither measure made it to the president’s desk. Beyond that, Republicans say rolling back deportation deferrals would be a logistical nightmare.

“It’s really complicated,” said Senate Minority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas. “As we saw with DACA for the so-called DREAMers, once the horse is out of the barn, it’s pretty hard to get the horse back in the barn.”

If Republicans win control of the Senate in November, as many predict, they’ll have more options. They could pass a legislative repeal to show their disapproval, though they probably would not have enough votes to override Obama’s inevitable veto.

They could also sue the president, as House Republicans have done over his delays of the Affordable Care Act’s employer mandate. Senate Republicans, partnering with a private business, filed suit to challenge the president’s recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board. They scored a victory this year when the Supreme Court ruled that only Congress can decide when it is in recess.

Some Republicans have concluded that a lawsuit is the most prudent course of action. It carries minimal political risk and could help restore the balance of power between the White House and Capitol Hill.

But going to court requires patience, and that is likely to be in short supply if Obama legalizes millions of illegal immigrants by fiat.

That points toward a showdown. And if neither side backs away, a showdown could become a government shutdown. Republicans dread that prospect. They have tried it, or allowed it, before and suffered a public relations rout. But that doesn’t mean they can avert it other than by capitulating to an overweening executive. They’re not in the mood to do so, and Obama has little incentive to compromise.

Government funding expires Dec. 11, and if Obama unveils his plan before then, House and Senate Republicans say they will use the appropriations process to attempt to force the president to reverse himself.

It isn’t just the Tea Party that is up in arms, and these aren’t idle threats. Establishment Republicans and those connected to leadership say they would support language outlawing Obama’s legalization in whatever funding bill Congress passes to keep the government running.

A senior House Republican said flatly that it’s not even a matter of strategy at this point. If Obama goes ahead with executive amnesty after the midterm elections, there won’t be enough GOP votes in the House to pass a funding bill that doesn’t include such language. Fueling the likelihood of this approach is the sense among Republicans that it is not as politically perilous as it would be in September, ahead of the elections.

“You’re going to see the appropriations process raised to a whole new level in terms of limitation amendments,” said Rep. Peter Roskam, R-Ill., who was majority chief deputy whip from January 2011 until this July and is hardly considered a firebrand.

Still, there are a lot of wild cards that could change the game before year’s end.

The Obama administration hasn’t revealed how expansive the amnesty will be. Republicans have mixed opinions about what the president will do.

Given that Obama postponed his announcement until after the last electoral contest of his presidency, some expect him to feel freer to go big to cement his his legacy and permanently align the Democratic Party with Hispanic voters.

Other Republicans predict the legalization will be broad enough to satisfy his left-wing base but just small enough to make it difficult for Republicans to galvanize public support against it.

Democrats who have been pushing Obama to act are optimistic that the legalization will be substantial.

The politics of amnesty might favor Republicans in the short term. Democrats concede this but are buoyed by polls that show broad public support for an overhaul that includes legalizing undocumented immigrants. Democrats are confident that the issue is a winner for the party — particularly as the 2016 race for the White House accelerates. After all, they note, Obama did not pay a political price for DACA when he ran for re-election in 2012.

Obama won 73 percent of the Hispanic vote on his way to a second term. A national CBS News/New York Times poll of adults conducted from Sept. 12 to 15 found that 50 percent thought illegal immigrants should be allowed to stay in America and apply for citizenship. Only 32 percent said illegal immigrants should have to leave the country. In the same poll, 51 percent said Obama should issue executive orders to address immigration if Congress doesn’t act; 43 percent said he should not.

Rep. Luis Gutierrez, who more than anyone is pushing Obama to act unilaterally, says his conversations with administration officials make him confident that the president’s executive action will be “very” broad and generous. “What I believe ‘broad and generous’ means is relief — 5 million people,” the Illinois Democrat explained. “They have not told me that. But you can extrapolate from questions and from suggestions.”

Circumstances could change Obama’s plans, as well as how Republicans react to them.

Congressional approval allowing Obama to arm and train Syrian rebels to fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria is due to expire Dec. 11, along with the continuing resolution that funded the government. Sentiment is growing on both sides of the aisle that Congress should thoroughly debate Obama’s strategy and formally vote on his authority for war against ISIS.

The White House says it can legally continue military operations indefinitely, but if momentum builds for a vote and Obama needs Republican votes for his Middle East strategy, he could choose again to delay executive amnesty for illegal immigrants. The war against ISIS also puts more pressure on Congress to use the postelection lame-duck session to approve the 2015 National Defense Authorization Act.

The bill has bogged down because the Democratic Senate has not passed its own version of the legislation or the version already passed by Republicans in the House. Current events point toward a negotiated compromise after Congress returns to Washington on Nov. 12 but before the end of the year.

And the election result itself could make a big difference. Republicans need to win six Senate seats from Democrats to retake the majority. GOP victories in Montana, South Dakota and West Virginia are considered certain. Republicans are on offense in half a dozen others, including three states won easily in 2012 by its presidential nominee, Mitt Romney. The Louisiana contest may not be decided on Nov. 4, and Republicans doubt that Obama would doom Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu by granting amnesty before her Dec. 6 runoff — especially if control of the Senate hinges on her race.

A Republican Senate takeover could dramatically alter the GOP’s ability from January onward to push back against Obama’s executive amnesty. It could also prompt a change in strategy by House Republicans.

“We may be limited, particularly with the Senate Democrat majority, at least for the remainder of this year, to respond to that,” said Rep. Pat Tiberi, R-Ohio, echoing the hope of many House Republicans that they will be better situated to battle Obama on this issue and others in 2015.

Rather than initiate a standoff with a Democratic Senate, Republicans might decide to move ahead in December with another short-term continuing resolution to fund the government so they can get into the new year and fight Obama’s legalization with a new battalion in the Senate. A united Republican Congress could work together to approve must-pass legislation that includes language striking executive amnesty.

Democrats would have enough votes to filibuster many such bills, and they would probably muster the will to do so. But Republicans are optimistic that controlling both houses of Congress would put them in a better position to win debates with Obama on a range of issues, executive amnesty among them.

South Dakota Sen. John Thune, Republican Conference chairman and third-ranking GOP leader, said he expects Obama and congressional Republicans to play pingpong as part of a negotiating process, with Congress passing and Obama vetoing major legislation, perhaps several times, before they make a deal. “If we want to get his cooperation on anything, we’re going to have to get his attention,” Thune said.

Republican insiders believe the results of the midterm elections will determine how aggressive Republicans are in responding to Obama on immigration. GOP members don’t want to seem to be allowing politics to dictate their strategy, but in interview after interview they agreed this was inevitable.

If Democrats hold the Senate, a government shutdown may be Republicans’ only option to block executive amnesty, one GOP lobbyist said. The ability to manipulate appropriations to confront Obama without threatening a shutdown simply won’t be available to Republicans if Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., remains majority leader in the Senate.

If Republicans win the Senate they might choose to delay confronting Obama until January, when they will have more power and legislative tools at their disposal. But senior House Republicans expect the rank and file would demand a fight first, before agreeing to a tactical retreat. That means a government shutdown in mid-December remains on the table, if Obama acts.

There also is the matter of the outrage Obama’s action would cause among immigration hawks in Congress, the GOP’s conservative base and activists who have been able to influence members’ behavior. Some Republicans will pivot to their planned campaigns for president immediately following the midterms, complicating congressional GOP leadership plans to be smart and tactical in taking on the president.

Sen. Ted Cruz is expected to announce a presidential bid early next year. The Tea Party-affiliated Texas Republican, a firm opponent of legalizing undocumented immigrants, was behind last year’s shutdown that sought to use the appropriations process to defund Obamacare. He has not ruled out doing so again. Cruz sponsored legislation to roll back DACA and pre-empt Obama’s executive amnesty. That bill received the votes of five Senate Democrats just before Congress left town for the campaign recess.

Immigration hawks such as Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, also appear disinclined to support any tactical accommodation by the GOP. King cannot necessarily sway his fellow Republicans, but his point of view often offers a clue of what the GOP leadership will face as it tries to chart a strategic course.

“If the president does what he promised he would do, we’ve got to shut it off immediately,” King said. “If you give it 30 days or 90 days to fester or get established, you’ve got 5 to 9 million people that think all of a sudden they’re legal and think that the president is king. We can’t have either one of those circumstances.”