Both relieved and worried

AT THE Guatemalan consulate in Atlanta, Georgia, Juan Raymundo Lopez, a young immigrant in a baseball cap, is sitting in an office hoping to get his passport in order. His two young sons sit nearby—one fast asleep on a desk, his head resting on a cuddly bald eagle. Thanks to those children, Mr Lopez hopes he will now be shielded from deportation, under the terms of the executive action ordered by Barack Obama. But he isn’t yet sure. For an illegal immigrant the hardest thing, Mr Lopez reckons, is “not having a driving licence”. Despite this, he has twice been caught driving drunk, which may complicate his case.

Researchers estimate that in total 5m people, or about 40% of America’s large illegal-immigrant population, could benefit from the decision that Mr Obama announced on November 20th. Of these, roughly 3.5m are like Mr Lopez, parents of American-born children who have been in America for at least five years. The rest are mostly people who arrived in America as children, most of whom had previously been protected by an earlier presidential decree known as DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals). Though they do not gain any formal status, those who are eligible will now be able to get temporary work permits, leave the country without fear of being denied re-entry and start paying taxes.

The fallout will be long-lasting. The president’s lawyers argue that since it is hardly feasible to deport all 11m people living illegally in America, the federal government can set priorities about who it chooses to kick out. But Republicans are livid. Moderates accuse the president of “poisoning the well” of co-operation in Congress. Those on the hard right go much further. Steve King, a congressman from Iowa, delayed his Thanksgiving plans and instead went to the Mexican border to complain about fence-jumpers having “anchor babies”.

Yet while Republicans are angry, the people who should benefit are hardly jubilant either. “This is bittersweet progress for our community,” says Pablo Alvarado, director of the National Day Labourer Organising Network in Los Angeles. Many families are profoundly relieved, but many are split—with some members now protected and others not. Some, such as Mr Lopez, worry about brushes with the law. Others struggle to find supporting documents such as birth certificates for their children. Some cannot afford to apply for a work permit, which costs around $500.

The political outcry is nerve-racking for those living in the shadows. Since the decree lasts just three years—and so could lapse, or be revoked by a Republican president—some may be nervous about exposing themselves to the government. This should not be a deterrent, say advocates. After all, the government “does not have the resources to arrest 4m people”, points out Jonathan Eoloff, a lawyer in Atlanta. But getting the message across is not always easy. Just 55% of the people affected by the president’s previous executive action, DACA, have come forward over the past two years. The proportion who actually take up the president’s offer this time may be lower still.

Cooler thinking

What really matters is what follows. If moderate Republicans are right, and Mr Obama’s action makes a comprehensive, congressionally-mandated reform less likely, then his move could prove to be a hollow victory for immigrants and their advocates. Real gains—a path to citizenship (or permanent residency) for taxpaying, law-abiding residents, equal access to benefits and government services, and the loosening of quotas for highly skilled immigrants—may be put on hold for years.

Yet there are reasons why such pessimism may be overdone. Even hotheads like Mr King may have cooled: in October he suggested that executive action would justify an attempt to impeach the president, but he no longer says that. Relatively few Republicans agree with Ted Cruz, a senator and Tea Party favourite from Texas, that their party should not fear using Congress’s budget powers to thwart the president’s “amnesty”, even at the risk of shutting down the government again.

The trouble for Republicans is misaligned incentives. Presidential elections are growing hard to win without warmer ties to Hispanic voters in such swing states as Colorado. Many Republican senators, too, are in favour of reform—which is why in June 2013 the Senate was able to pass a comprehensive reform bill with a veto-proof 68 votes. But large numbers of House Republicans have few such aims. Thanks to gerrymandering—and to the fact that Hispanics tend to cluster in big cities—very few congressmen stand to benefit politically from helping to introduce immigration reform. That explains why the Senate’s bill has got no further.

From January, however, the Republicans will control both chambers. This means that they need not share the credit for any reform with Democrats. John Boehner, the House Speaker, who has refused to bring a version of the Senate’s bill to the floor of the House, may see pushing through reform as a way to bolster his own legacy, suggests Muzaffar Chishti of the Migration Policy Institute, a think-tank.

One idea, laid out by Jeff Flake, a senator from Arizona, is that Republicans could break up comprehensive reform into chunks and pass them bit by bit. This would start with things that Republicans want—such as a bill tightening border security—and work through loosening high-skilled visa rules, only at the end concluding with what Mr Obama wants, a pathway to citizenship for existing illegal immigrants. At each stage, the president would have to accept something he doesn’t want in the hope of getting reform that may never appear. But a law proposing citizenship (as opposed to a temporary shield from deportation) is a substantial carrot to offer.

In the absence of a comprehensive reform law from Washington, how each state chooses to treat immigrants without papers will make a great deal of difference. In January, California will begin issuing 1.4m driving licences to undocumented migrants. Nine other states, including Nevada and New Mexico, already issue licences. Arizona, by contrast, makes life much more difficult for people without documents—requiring, for example, that police officers check immigration status whenever they stop a driver.

Those affected by Mr Obama’s actions are mostly from Mexico and other Latin American countries. But thanks to the combination of tighter border security, deportation and the relative weakness of the construction industry in the sunbelt, the number of Mexicans is thought to be falling. With border flows ebbing, the average irregular migrant has now been in the country for almost 13 years, up from under nine in 2007, according to the Pew Research Centre, a think-tank. The fastest-growing populations of illegal immigrants are mostly in northern states such as New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland, and come from countries other than Mexico. For all the congressional fire-breathing about building border fences, new arrivals are more likely to arrive on an aeroplane than to have forded the Rio Grande.

Nativists have thrived over the years with talk of ever-larger invasions by illegal aliens over a porous border. Current trends suggest that the story of migration will look very different, with more stable populations of foreign-born residents, extending deeper roots into American communities. That should give the American miracle of assimilation time to work its magic. Perhaps what is needed is simply patience. In the meantime, though, the political war goes on.