2014年经济学人 移民政策 万事俱备但缺行动（在线收听）

Immigration policy

Ready, steady, do nothing

Barack Obama defers his promise to help out illegal immigrants

“TODAY, I'm beginning a new effort to fix as much of our immigration system as I can on my own, without Congress,” said Barack Obama in June. Lamenting the refusal of Republicans in the House of Representatives to pass an immigration reform bill, he vowed to use his executive powers to “fix as much of our immigration system as we can”. He vowed to have a plan by the end of' the summer and to implement it “without further delay”. But on September 7th he admitted that he would not in fact do these things until after the mid-term elections in November.

Some 11.3m immigrants—mostly Spanish-speaking—live illegally in America, according to the Pew Research Centre, a think-tank. That figure is roughly the same as it was when border controls started to tighten dramatically in 2006 or so. The main effect of making it harder to cross the border is that unlawful migrants no longer go back and forth as they used to. A decade ago, a typical migrant had lived in America for nearly eight years. Now the figure is almost 13 years.

Only a fraction of those people will ever be sent home. Mass deportation would knock 1.5% off GDP each year and destroy 3.6m jobs in California alone, estimates Raúl Hinojosa-Ojeda of the University of California, Los Angeles. Mr Obama wants Congress to create a path for law-abiding, tax-paying migrants to become citizens. Since it won't, he has ordered the authorities to focus on deporting migrants who commit serious crimes.In 2012 he gave protection from deportation to around 1m people who had migrated illegally to America as children. A new executive order could extend that to parents.

Over the summer, however, thousands of Central American children surged across the border, creating an impression of chaos that Republican ads exploited. Vulnerable Democrats begged Mr Obama not to do anything that could be portrayed as soft on border security. He has obliged.

Supporters of immigration reform chide the president for breaking his promises. Many are also furious that he has deported more than 2m people since taking office. But some think he is being shrewd. If he tries to fix the system just before an election and Democrats lose, they may conclude that immigration reform is toxic and abandon it. Far better, some argue, to wait.

Delay may not hurt Democrats much. Latinos are angry, but historically they have been less likely to vote in mid-term elections than whites. In 2010 just 31% of them turned out, against 49% of non-Hispanic whites. This year, Democrats are counting on the Hispanic vote to clinch victory in only one Senate race, in Colorado. And so the system remains broken.