Lanhee J Chen, Columnist

A Republican Moment on Immigration

Obama's retreat on immigration gives Republicans an opening to fix the system and court Latino voters.

September 8, 2014 at 5:31 PM UTC

Lanhee Chen is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution who also teaches public policy at Stanford University. He was the policy director of Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign. Chen was a senior official at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in the George W. Bush administration. He practiced business litigation with the law firm of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP and served as the Winnie Neubauer visiting fellow in health policy studies at the Heritage Foundation. Chen earned his doctorate and master's degree in political science from Harvard University, his law degree from Harvard Law School and his bachelor's degree in government from Harvard College.

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Immigration reform has never been a priority for President Barack Obama. In 2008, he promised to push comprehensive legislation during his first year as president. He didn't, despite having a Democratic-controlled Congress in 2009 and 2010. This year, rather than working with pro-reform Republicans such as Representatives Kevin McCarthy and Paul Ryan on bipartisan, permanent changes, he said he would act unilaterally on immigration by the end of the summer. It should now come as no surprise that the president decided to delay this executive action until after the midterm elections in November.

This decision is entirely political, intended to help save vulnerable Senate Democrats locked in tight re-election campaigns. In making this decision, however, Obama may have created challenges for Democrats that extend far beyond 2014.