However, in California, where millions of illegal immigrants live, a semi-formal version of state-level amnesty has been gathering steam for years. Despite dogged opposition by Republican and Tea Party activists, Sacramento’s slow-motion legalization of the undocumented has paved the way for the White House’s planned moves to receive a much smoother reception than in other state capitols.

Still, the exact details of Obama’s intended actions remain murky, and even among libertarian-leaning immigration doves, his assertion of sweeping executive powers has hit against fierce criticism. Indeed, as the Washington Post noted, the president himself previously disavowed the constitutionality of what he may now have resolved to do — insisting he was “not a king” and could not “just suspend deportations through executive order.” Californians have not been immune to the sense of ambiguity surrounding Obama’s shifting immigration policy.

Apprehension and expectations

In an interview with the San Jose Mercury News, one illegal immigrant described his discomfort in emblematic terms. Ernesto Perez — a 44-year-old father of four who has spent 19 years residing illegally in the United States — told the paper, “Obama is the only hope we have right now. Because three of my kids live with me, I’m always afraid that I will be separated from them. They need me. We need each other.”

Perez’ long undocumented stay underscored just how lax California has been in prosecuting illegal immigration, and for how long. His personal uncertainty, however, confirmed what millions of legal and illegal residents have known about president Obama for years: his willingness to deport. Critics from the left, such as Bill Moyers, have slammed Obama for breaking records with over 2 million deportations during his time in office.

That’s why illegal immigrants in California have depended so much on the Golden State’s incremental approach to legalization. Through a battery of state laws and regulations, Sacramento has given undocumented residents several protective paths toward the kind of status that makes it harder to deport.

With taxpayer money, access has been opened to educational loans for college, legal representation in juvenile court proceedings, driver’s licenses and the practice of law without a Social Security number. The California Supreme Court ruled in January that Sergio Garcia, an illegal immigrant who duly passed the California Bar Examination, could not be prohibited by the state from practicing law; Gov. Jerry Brown authorized Garcia’s license soon thereafter.

A push from activists

California activists dedicated to full legalization have used the state’s legal landscape as a justification for pressing president Obama for sweeping changes. In a typical statement making the rounds, California Immigrant Policy Center director Reshma Shamasunder urged Obama “to move on executive action and end unjust deportations that have caused the separation of families, as quickly as possible. Given the stalling we’ve seen in Congress for so many years, we hope he is bold in his action and covers as many people as possible.”

As KQED reported, California’s rules 麻将牌 helped swell the immigrant population to its current level, with about half of the children in state claiming an immigrant parent and one in four residents claiming foreign birth. Although legal immigrants have not pushed in a collective way for swift and full amnesty, Latino voters have consistently shown support for some kind of expanded “path toward citizenship,” as policymakers in both major political parties often put it.

For their part, Republicans have warned of consequences if Obama opts against enforcing the immigration laws on the books. Michael Steel, the spokesman for Speaker of the House John Boehner, R-OH, adopted the colorful language characteristic of today’s media relations officials, “If ‘Emperor Obama’ ignores the American people and announces an amnesty plan that he himself has said over and over again exceeds his Constitutional authority, he will cement his legacy of lawlessness and ruin the chances for congressional action on this issue — and many others.”

Rhetoric or reality? With the president’s announcement on amnesty coming tomorrow, the fireworks will begin in earnest. The new, Republican-dominated Senate is seated in January, added to continued GOP control of the House.

Obama is leaving office in two years due to term limits. So in the new year, jockeying to be his replacement will intensify in both the Republican and Democratic parties, with his amnesty possibly the top issue out of the starting gate.

Obviously, there’s been focus-group testing galore that leads Dems to think this theme is powerful and resonates with independent voters. And so the decision to make the race a referendum on the Tea Party.

But the 52nd congressional district isn’t West Los Angeles or Marin County. It covers mostly affluent coastal and northern San Diego and went decisively for Mitt Romney, a part-time resident of the district, in 2012.

And given the fact that DeMaio is gay, the usual tactic of depicting tea party members as social conservative extremists doesn’t work so well — the “war on women” shtick, etc. Here’s an example of this framing, a Washington Post story headlined “Social conservatives are mobilizing in France, leading to talk of a tea party.”

It’s quite possible that Democrats and some in the media actually don’t realize that the Tea Party is fundamentally libertarian — devoted to liberty and small government — and is not a conspiracy-mongering birther front. When the only people you listen to are those on MSNBC and Daily Kos, and Paul Krugman, you’re inclined to see all Republicans as contemptible haters.

Tea Party no fan of GOP establishment’s views on immigration

Yet the more sophisticated observers get that the Tea Party really is at odds with the modern GOP establishment — not just on its habit of giving in and accepting the big-spending federal status quo but on immigration. This isn’t just an anecdote-based claim. This info is from Thomas Edsall, the veteran journalist who for decades has actually tried to bring political science research into political journalism:

Parker and Barreto conducted surveys to see if Tea Party conservatives differ from non-Tea Party conservatives. … the two kinds of conservatives diverge significantly on key issues: immigration, civil liberties and in how they see President Obama.

The surveys showed that 50 percent of Tea Party-identifying members opposed the DREAM Act vs. 30 percent of non-Tea Party conservatives; 66 percent of Tea Party-identifying members opposed the path to citizenship for illegal immigrants vs. 46 percent of non-Tea Party conservatives; and that 58 percent of Tea Party-identifying members correlated more immigration with more crime vs. 49 percent of non-Tea Party conservatives.

But other surveys show Tea Party members more likely than standard conservatives to reject limits on abortion and gay marriage — the social issue litmus tests. They’re not bomb-throwers on social wedge issues.

Tea Party members I’ve talked with often say they back higher immigration — but with a Canada-style approach valuing applicants with needed job skills, not a system in which immigrants essentially self-select.

DeMaio is in the real-border-security-first camp.

But he’s not making it a key theme in this very interesting congressional race.

Here’s a Breitbart account of how DeMaio is responding to the Tea Party narrative: by ridiculing it.

Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, provides his insights to CalWatchdog.com’s Brian Calle.

Then conservative groups attacked the bipartisan budget agreement between Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., which the full Congress just passed. It cuts benefits for veterans and raises fees related to air travel. And Boehner lost his patience with the more conservative wing.

Boehner lashed out at the groups over the course of two days. Boehner said he thought outside conservative groups “have lost all credibility” and that he does not care what they do.

He later explained his outburst against the groups, saying, “Yesterday, when the criticism was coming, frankly I thought it was my job and my obligation to stand up for conservatives here in the Congress who want more deficit reduction, to stand up for the work that Chairman Ryan did.”

Boehner’s outburst wasn’t impotent. Despite opposition from outside conservative groups, the two-year budget deal passed the House 332 to 94. A majority of the Republican conference voted yes. It was a significant test of Boehner’s resolve against the more ideologically pure elements of his party. But the bet paid off.

Control

No political win, however, exists in a vacuum.  Liberal activists — and even conservative moderates — immediately begin to suggest that Boehner’s move against the conservative elements of his party was the preface to Boehner reasserting establishment control over the legislative agenda.  Many have predicted that Boehner’s move was a signal that he was now willing to move immigration reform.

A California-based immigration reform activist, who spoke to CalWatchdog.com on the condition of anonymity to be more candid, said that Boehner’s recent behavior was “heart-warming” and seemed “honest.”

The activist, who has been involved in lobbying California Congressmen to push for reform, added, “It makes you think, ‘OK, maybe [Boehner will] play ball.’”

But he cautioned that, while activists are optimistic, they’re not blindly so. He expects that major immigration reform won’t be able to pass until 2015, at the earliest. It’s difficult to pass major legislation in an election year, he explained, and it makes more strategic sense (from the Republican point of view) to wait.

Republicans, who are at a politically advantageous position because of the trouble associated with the rollout of Obamacare, reasonably expect to pick up seats in the midterms. They could feasibly control the Senate — though that will be no easy task — by January 2015. So why would they pass immigration reform when they’re almost certain to pick up seats and enter a stronger bargaining position? The answer is simple: They wouldn’t.

So, yes, Speaker Boehner has changed his tune. But that doesn’t mean he’ll change his strategy just yet.

By Chris Reed

One of the most striking things about the debate over changing our immigration laws is the refusal to have a real discussion about what would happen to existing citizens with relatively few job skills if we allowed millions more unskilled people to become citizens. It’s striking that for much of his career as a union organizer, including when he was on the cover of TIME at right, Cesar Chavez was a strong critic of illegal immigration because he feared the negative effects on farm workers who were already here.

This should be a social justice issue with the left, one would think. But except in the blogging and columns of Los Angeles Democrat Mickey Kaus, this pretty much never comes up. That’s why it is so surprising, and welcome, to see a liberal writer, T.A. Frank of The New Republic, make this point, explaining how he started out with the standard views that “decent people” are supposed to have on immigration before his life experiences and growing familiarity with the history of immigration led him to a different conclusion:

‘Immense blow to America’s working class, poor’

“All in all, I became convinced that high levels of low-skill immigration are good for wealthy Americans and bad for poor Americans.  Far more important, high levels of illegal immigration—when you start to get into the millions, as we have—undermines unions and labor standards, lowers wages, heightens social tensions, strains state budgets, widens income inequality, subverts the rule of law, and exacerbates class divides. The effects go far beyond wages, because few undocumented workers earn enough to cover anything close to the cost of government services (such as education for their children) they require, and those services are most important to low-income Americans. In short, it’s an immense blow to America’s working class and poor. …

“… a lot of Democrats have also convinced themselves that even if there’s a wage loss to low-skilled workers, the massive new voting bloc of mostly left-leaning immigrants will ultimately help the little guy. But if millions of new Democratic voters oppose strict immigration control, then there will no Democratic support for meaningful immigration control. And generous social benefits cannot coexist with an open border.  (Nor can a more egalitarian society.)”

Good for Frank. He’s actually willing to think through the implications of what will happen if the House adopts legislation similar to what the Senate passed Thursday.

Unfortunately, we can’t have a real debate about this because skeptics of immigration reform, as Frank notes, are not considered to be “decent people.” But such skeptics aren’t all nativists by any means. Some of them are realists. And some of these realists think hurting the job prospects of existing low-skill Americans isn’t the right thing to do.