White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest insisted that despite deciding to delay taking executive action, President Barack Obama remains committed to "making good" on his promise to use his authority to implement immigration reform,
The Hill reports.
“The president has tasked his team with looking at the law and determining what kind of executive authority he can use to try to address the problems of our broken immigration system," said Earnest during an appearance on Telemundo’s “Enfoque con Jose Diaz-Balart.
"This is a promise the president will keep," added Earnest.
Since they disclosed in early September the delay in taking executive action on immigration reform, Obama and administration officials have sought to minimize blowback from the Hispanic community.
“The truth of the matter is that the politics did shift midsummer because of that problem. I want to spend some time, even as we're getting all our ducks in a row for the executive action, I also want to make sure that the public understands why we're doing this, why it's the right thing for the American people, why it's the right thing for the American economy,” said Obama in a Sept. 7 interview on NBC's Meet the Press.
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The next day, Earnest
clarified Obama's comments saying the delay was "specifically because he is concerned mostly about ensuring the solution that he offers is both sustainable and enduring."
He added that "injecting an executive action in the midst of this hyper-partisan, hyper-political environment shortly before the midterms" would have a negative impact.
And Vice President Joe Biden told the audience at a reception for Hispanic Heritage Month the administration would act, and contended that waiting until after the election would improve chances of reaching its goals.
"I know you're all waiting and you're frustrated. Watch when this election is over, watch what happens when all of a sudden our friends in the other team realize their prospects for future electoral success hinge upon acting rationally.
"They will either act rationally, or we will act for them, and if we have to act for them, they will not be around a whole lot longer to act in large numbers," Biden said,
according to CBS News.
But many Hispanics continue to view the delay as a betrayal.
"Every day I live in fear that my mom and dad will be deported to Ecuador, so I was outraged and disappointed at the president’s decision to delay executive action. It was another broken promise and a slap to the face of the Latino and immigrant community. The president and democrats picked politics over our families," Cristina Jimenez, managing director of United We Dream Network,
told MSNBC recently.
That sense of disappointment in Obama and the Democratic Party is borne out in recent opinion polls.
An NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Telemundo poll showed Latinos' support for Obama dropped from 62 percent in April 2013 to 47 percent
in a survey released in early September.
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Pew Research Center poll also found Hispanics souring on Democrats. In the survey, Hispanic Democrats were more likely than whites or blacks to criticize the party's stance on immigration with 40 percent responding that it is not willing enough to allow legal status. Among white Democrats, 17 percent share that view and only 13 percent of black Democrats agree.
Another poll from Gallup reflected the priority
Hispanic voters, a key Democratic voting bloc, place on the issue of immigration.
The percent of Hispanics who viewed immigration as a "top problem" rose from 13 percent in the first half of the year to 25 percent between the first half of the year and the past three months, according to a combined sample of Gallup polls conducted in July, August, and September, consisting of 3,062 adults.
Among all adults, the percentage increased from 4 percent to 15 percent.
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