Obama Immigration Plan: More Direct Path to Citizenship Than Senate's

Obama Immigration Plan: More Direct Path to Citizenship Than Senate's

President Barack Obama is expected to lay out his principles for immigration reform in a speech in Las Vegas today that will include a potentially quicker path to citizenship than the bipartisan plan a group of senators unveiled earlier this week. 

The president will offer some new details about the White House's immigration reform plan, which expands on a blueprint it released in 2011, a senior administration official told ABC News. But for now Obama will stop short of offering his own piece of legislation because of the progress made by the Senate "Gang of Eight."

 

The White House has sounded positive notes about the Senate group's plan thus far, but the specifics that Obama announces are expected to have some key differences that might cause concern for some Republican senators who have signed onto the senate deal. 

Like the senators' plan, Obama's proposal calls for a pathway to citizenship for many of the 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. The senators' plan would grant "probationary legal status" immediately to eligible undocumented immigrants, but would not allow them to apply for permanent legal status, or a green card, until the border is deemed to be secure. Think of that as a trigger system. 

On the other hand, administration officials told media outlets that they believe a path to citizenship needs to be more straightforward. They believe a trigger system, like the one in the senate plan, could lead to a state of legal limbo for the undocumented immigrants who receive legal status, The Washington Post reported. 

The border-security-first plan, however, is essential to Republican senators who signed onto the Senate "Gang of Eight" deal. 

"I will not be supporting any law that does not ensure that the enforcement things happen," Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), a member of the group, told conservative blogger Ed Morrissey on his web radio show. 

Obama's plan is likely to include language that would allow same-sex bi-national couples to have the same rights as heterosexual couples, BuzzFeed and The Washington Post reported. Under current law, gays and lesbians who are married to U.S. citizens under state laws cannot obtain a green card. Obama's plan would allow them a path to citizenship, but the issue is not mentioned in the Senate "Gang of Eight" proposal. 

As noted by the Post, that language may anger Christian groups who have signaled they would support comprehensive immigration reform. 

But the White House remains optimistic about the progress that has been made so far. An official described the senators' announcement as a "breakthrough" to ABC News because it wasn't clear whether Republicans would sign on to any path to citizenship. 

Some observers couched the Senate group's decision to come out with his plan a day before Obama as an attempt to outfox the White House politically. But administration officials told media outlets they remain generally pleased with the plan and believe that the president's speech could build momentum for a final bill.

The White House reiterated that the president was very encouraged by the Senate's proposal since it includes a pathway to citizenship that is endorsed by Republicans, who have previously opposed immigration reform that includes such a path. 

"Our focus is that this is a positive development," White House spokesman Luis Miranda told ABC/Univision. "We feel very positive that there is a proposal in the first place and that it is consistent with what the president has supported in the past." 

The White House clarified that it is withholding judgment on language in the Senate framework that requires a border security "trigger" to obtain a green card until actual legislative language is released by the senators.

"What we have said is that there needs to be a clear path to citizenship," said Miranda. "We'll wait to see what they flesh out."

Don't expect an Obama-Netanyahu blowup

Washington-- In the run-up to the Israel elections, two pieces of conventional wisdom were making the rounds among analysts, diplomats and experts: First, Benjamin Netanyahu would win big, and second, the victory would propel him on a collision course with Barack Obama, a second term president seeking to do something serious on the peace issue.

The first proved to be dead wrong. The second will probably follow suit."Bibi" Netanyahu has just been re-elected prime minister, no less for the third time. But don't get out the popcorn and turn out the lights just yet. The sequel to the Obama-Bibi wars isn't about to begin.

Sure, their relationship has been perhaps the most dysfunctional in the history of U.S.-Israeli ties. And there are bound to be plenty of downs in the next several years, particularly if Netanyahu is forced to form a narrow right-wing governing coalition.But the U.S.-Israeli relationship is simply too big and important to fail, particularly now.

Netanyahu's party wins but centrists flex muscle, polls show

Indeed, given the real prospects that the new Israeli coalition will include Yair Lapid's centrist party (whose surprise showing of 19 seats may make him a coalition lynchpin) and maybe another moderate faction if Lapid won't sit with other right-wingers in the coalition, the two leaders may have less reason to fight and more reasons to cooperate. Here's why.

Second term illusion

The notion that a second-term president freed from the constraints of re-election will now hammer an Israeli prime minister with a big peace initiative just doesn't add up.

First, there's no precedent for such a thing in American policy toward the Arab-Israeli negotiations. Bill Clinton's push at Camp David in July 2000 -- the precedent most often cited -- came not from Clinton, but at then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak's urging.Second, it's the presence of opportunity, not the absence of political constraints or the desire to get even and settle scores, that leads a U.S. president to act.

A quick look around and any sentient human being would see that a grand deal between Israelis and Palestinians isn't possible now. Lapid's presence in the coalition may restrain some of the Israeli right's ambitions to expand settlements, but it isn't enough to support a full-scale push toward a comprehensive peace.

Indeed. Lapid's focus was on economic issues and national service, not on negotiations with the Palestinians.

The suspicions between Israelis and Palestinians are too deep, the gaps on the issues too big, and the political houses on each side too divided.

More likely, the new Netanyahu government will focus on some kind of interim accord with the Palestinians. And that leads us to the second reason that a big fight is likely not in the offing.

Why fight about nothing?

Fighting with an Israeli prime minister (and the Arabs, too) is a part of the job description of serious American mediators. But the fight needs to be productive and worth the effort.

Right now, there's nothing to fight about because there's no conceivable Israeli-Palestinian agreement in the offing. You fight when you think there's a way to produce an agreement that would justify the risks of a confrontation, not when you're certain to fail. For Obama, whose domestic agenda will require an enormous expenditure of political capital at home, neither fighting with Republicans and Democrats over pressure on Israel nor launching an initiative that fails is smart politics.

John Kerry needs a friend

We are going to have a new secretary of state who will have responsibility -- assuming he can convince the president to let him handle the issue -- for dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian problem. The last thing Kerry wants is a worsening of ties between Obama and Netanyahu that makes it impossible for him to do his job on such a key issue.

If Kerry wants to have a chance of succeeding -- even to manage the problem -- he'll need a relationship with Netanyahu based on some measure of confidence and trust. This is even more important given the absence of such trust between Obama and the prime minister.

Bush 41 and then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir didn't get along. James Baker managed to hammer out a working relationship with Shamir, tense at times but functional. Without it, there would have been no Madrid peace talks.

If Kerry is smart, he'll keep the door to Netanyahu open and try to see if he can't reach some understanding with the prime minister. If he can't, there will be plenty of time to fight later.

The Iranian Issue

The big reason why Bibi and Obama will likely have a stake this time around in more cooperation and less friction is Iran. The fact is neither Obama, the mullahs, nor Netanyahu wants a war over the nuclear issue. But avoiding one will require the closest of cooperation between Jerusalem and Washington.

There's an expectation that 2013 will be the year of decision on the Iranian nuclear issue. Maybe yes, maybe no. But that expectation alone will require intimate coordination to prevent a unilateral Israeli strike, to see whether diplomacy can produce an Iranian-American deal and to determine whether it can be sold to Israel.

If not, and no diplomatic fix to the nuclear issue is possible, American-Israeli understandings will be required on a military option. Either way, neither the United States nor Israel can avoid a public falling out over Iran or a major split over how to manage the problem.

Simply put, the U.S.-Israeli relationship is too big to fail. That doesn't mean there won't be real differences over settlements, for example, that won't cause friction.

But on the two biggest issues of the day, how to manage Iran and the Palestinians, there can't be solutions without close Israeli-American cooperation.

It's legacy time. This is Obama's last term as president and perhaps Netanyahu's last term as prime minister. Obama doesn't want to be the U.S. president on whose watch Iran crossed the nuclear weapons threshold and certainly neither does Bibi want to be the Israeli prime minister held responsible.

It would be nice to imagine that the two can sit down and reach a broad strategic understanding -- first we deal with Iran, and if we succeed through diplomacy or even war, then let's find a way to preserve the two-state option for Israel and the Palestinians.

But even if this doesn't happen, these two leaders are inexorably bound together. They're never going to love each other. But I'm betting they'll find a way to get by without a major fight neither wants. The fact is the protection of Israeli and American interests and regional stability in a volatile, turbulent Middle East depends on it.

Obama embraces progressive agenda in second inaugural address

President Barack Obama Inaugural

Obama embraces progressive agenda in second inaugural address

President Barack Obama delivered a forceful defense of the nation's safety net programs, and vowed to expand gay rights and tackle the problem of climate change in his second inaugural address Monday afternoon.

The speech was a bolder and more specific defense of the president's liberal governing vision than the address he gave four years ago. For his first inaugural address, Obama stuck to a broader outline of his ideals and called on politicians to overcome partisan differences and work together in the face of economic crisis.

On national television and before a crowd of hundreds of thousands of spectators who descended on the Mall, Obama staunchly reiterated his belief that gay people should be allowed to marry.

"Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law–-for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well," Obama said. He also mentioned the gay rights Stonewall Riots of the 1960s in the same breath as the Selma civil rights marches.

In the same section of the speech, the president made oblique references to gun violence, equal pay for women and immigration reform. He called for "all our children, from the streets of Detroit to the hills of Appalachia to the quiet lanes of Newtown" to be kept safe from harm.

Earlier in the speech, Obama said to avoid the problem of climate change would "betray our children and future generations," signaling he may also make that issue a key piece of his second-term agenda. He abandoned efforts during his first term to push for so-called "cap and trade" legislation to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

The president challenged critics who have argued that the government must reduce its spending and cut back on social welfare programs, including Obama's health care reform law. Obama said that the country must reduce its deficit, but that the nation must work to protect equality of opportunity, in what seemed to be a reference to his battles with congressional Republicans over taxing and spending.

"We are true to our creed when a little girl born into the bleakest poverty knows that she has the same chance to succeed as anybody else, because she is an American, she is free, and she is equal, not just in the eyes of God but also in our own," he said.

Obama argued that the nation's entitlement programs make America stronger because they protect this chance at equality. "We recognize that no matter how responsibly we live our lives, any one of us, at any time, may face a job loss, or a sudden illness, or a home swept away in a terrible storm," Obama said. "The commitments we make to each other–-through Medicare, and Medicaid, and Social Security--these things do not sap our initiative; they strengthen us. They do not make us a nation of takers; they free us to take the risks that make this country great."

The president also warned in the 2,095-word speech that the country cannot succeed if a "shrinking few" succeed economically while the middle class suffers.

US may leave no troops in Afghanistan beyond 2014

US may leave no troops in Afghanistan beyond 2014

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration says it might leave no troops in Afghanistan after December 2014, an option that defies the Pentagon's view that thousands of troops may be needed to contain al-Qaida and to strengthen Afghan forces.

"We wouldn't rule out any option," including zero troops, Ben Rhodes, a White House deputy national security adviser, said Tuesday.

"The U.S. does not have an inherent objective of 'X' number of troops in Afghanistan," Rhodes said. "We have an objective of making sure there is no safe haven for al-Qaida in Afghanistan and making sure that the Afghan government has a security force that is sufficient to ensure the stability of the Afghan government."

The U.S. now has 66,000 troops in Afghanistan, down from a peak of about 100,000 as recently as 2010. The U.S. and its NATO allies agreed in November 2010 that they would withdraw all their combat troops by the end of 2014, but they have yet to decide what future missions will be necessary and how many troops they would require.

At stake is the risk of Afghanistan's collapse and a return to the chaos of the 1990s that enabled the Taliban to seize power and provide a haven for Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network. Fewer than 100 al-Qaida fighters are believed to remain in Afghanistan, although a larger number are just across the border in Pakistani sanctuaries.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has said he foresees a need for a U.S. counterterrorism force in Afghanistan beyond 2014, plus a contingent to train Afghan forces. He is believed to favor an option that would keep about 9,000 troops in the country.

Administration officials in recent days have said they are considering a range of options for a residual U.S. troop presence of as few as 3,000 and as many as 15,000, with the number linked to a specific set of military-related missions like hunting down terrorists.

Asked in a conference call with reporters whether zero was now an option, Rhodes said, "That would be an option we would consider."

His statement could be interpreted as part of an administration negotiating strategy. On Friday Afghan President Hamid Karzai is scheduled to meet President Barack Obama at the White House to discuss ways of framing an enduring partnership beyond 2014.

The two are at odds on numerous issues, including a U.S. demand that any American troops who would remain in Afghanistan after the combat mission ends be granted immunity from prosecution under Afghan law. Karzai has resisted, while emphasizing his need for large-scale U.S. support to maintain an effective security force after 2014.

In announcing last month in Kabul that he had accepted Obama's invitation to visit this week, Karzai made plain his objectives.

"Give us a good army, a good air force and a capability to project Afghan interests in the region," Karzai said, and he would gladly reciprocate by easing the path to legal immunity for U.S. troops.

Karzai is scheduled to meet Thursday with Panetta at the Pentagon and with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton at the State Department.

Without explicitly mentioning immunity for U.S. troops, Obama's top White House military adviser on Afghanistan, Doug Lute, told reporters Tuesday that the Afghans will have to give the U.S. certain "authorities" if it wants U.S. troops to remain.

"As we know from our Iraq experience, if there are no authorities granted by the sovereign state, then there's not room for a follow-on U.S. military mission," Lute said. He was referring to 2011 negotiations with Iraq that ended with no agreement to grant legal immunity to U.S. troops who would have stayed to help train Iraqi forces. As a result, no U.S. troops remain in Iraq.

David Barno, a retired Army three-star general and former commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, wrote earlier this week that vigorous debate has been under way inside the administration on a "minimalist approach" for post-2014 Afghanistan.

In an opinion piece for ForeignPolicy.com on Monday, Barno said the "zero option" was less than optimal but "not necessarily an untenable one." Without what he called the stabilizing influence of U.S. troops, Barno cautioned that Afghanistan could "slip back into chaos."

Barno said the Afghan-Pakistan border area where numbers of Islamic extremists are in hiding could become the scene of a prolonged "intelligence war" after 2014, with the U.S. and its Afghan and Pakistan partners sharing intelligence.

"Given its vital importance, this undertaking will endure — regardless of the size of the residual U.S. military presence," he wrote.

Rhodes said Obama is focused on two main outcomes in Afghanistan: ensuring that the country does not revert to being the al-Qaida haven it was prior to Sept. 11, 2001, and getting the government to the point where it can defend itself.

"That's what guides us, and that's what causes us to look for different potential troop numbers — or not having potential troops in the country," Rhodes said.

He predicted that Obama and Karzai would come to no concrete conclusions on international military missions in Afghanistan beyond 2014, and he said it likely would be months before Obama decides how many U.S. troops — if any — he wants to keep there.

Rhodes said Obama remains committed to further reducing the U.S. military presence this year, although the pace of that withdrawal will not be decided for a few months.

Sen. Mitch McConnell: ‘The Tax Issue Is Finished’

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell. R-Ky., Sunday said he will not accept any new revenue in future deals with congressional Democrats and President Obama.

“The tax issue is finished.  Over. Completed,” McConnell told me on “This Week.” “That’s behind us. Now the question is what are we going to do about the biggest problem confronting our country and that’s our spending addiction.

“We didn’t have this problem because we weren’t taxing enough,” McConnell added.

He blamed Obama and Democrats for waiting to resolve budget issues until the last minute.

Read a transcript of the full interview with Sen.

“Why we end up in these last-minute discussions is beyond me. We need to function,” McConnell said. “I mean, the House of Representatives, for example, passed a budget every year.  They’ve passed appropriation bills.

“The Senate Democratic majority and the president seem to like these last-minute deals.”

McConnell said that the biggest issue facing the country in the next year is the deficit and spending. And he predicted that the issue would occupy the congressional agenda in the first three months of the year, overtaking Obama’s other priorities, including gun control.

“But the biggest problem we have at the moment is spending and debt,” McConnell said. “That’s going to dominate the Congress between now and the end of March.  None of these issues, I think, will have the kind of priority that spending and debt are going to have over the next two or three months.”

On the expected nomination of former Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., as the secretary of Defense by Obama, McConnell said he would evaluate Hagel’s past statements before determining whether he could support his nomination in the Senate.

“I’m going to take a look at all the things that Chuck has said over the years and review that, and in terms of his qualifications to lead our nation’s military,” McConnell said. “The question we will be answering if he’s the nominee, is do his views make sense for that particular job?  I think he ought to be given a fair hearing, like any other nominee, and he will be.”

McConnell, who in 2008 praised Hagel for his clear voice and stature on foreign policy and national security, now says he will reserve judgment on his possible nomination until after a Senate confirmation hearing.

“I’m going to wait and see how the hearings go and see whether Chuck’s views square with the job he would be nominated to do,” he added.