Obama aims to rally support for immigration plan in Chicago

By Rick Pearson

President Barack Obama returns home to Chicago Tuesday afternoon seeking to boost support for his unilateral action to allow millions of immigrants in the country without legal permission to live and work in the United States and not fear deportation.

His visit to speak with immigration activists at the Copernicus Center could compound the pre-Thanksgiving holiday traffic rush if he motorcades along the Kennedy Expressway for the roughly 8-mile trip to and from O'Hare International Airport where Air Force One will land.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel is scheduled to join Obama at the Northwest Side event. The home-state president's speech is his second outside the nation's capitol since announcing Thursday his executive action on immigration and challenging House Republicans to approve more comprehensive changes to the nation's immigration laws — including a Senate-passed measure — if they disagree with his decision to act on his own.

But Republican House Speaker John Boehner has accused Obama of choosing to "deliberately sabotage" efforts toward enacting a bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform bill as well as "damaging the presidency itself" through the Democratic president's use of his executive authority.

Under Obama's actions, about 4.1 million people could be eligible for a program that will invite parents of either U.S. citizens or long-term permanent residents to apply for a work permit and gain three years of protection from deportation. Applicants will have to prove they have been in the country at least five years. The president is also making 300,000 more people eligible to avoid deportation under a program affecting those who arrived in the U.S. as children before June 2007. Another 600,000 would be eligible for legal status, in part, by expanding and adding visas for entrepreneurs and recent graduates in science and technology.

By holding an event at the Copernicus Center, with its history rooted in the city's Polish culture, Obama may be attempting to try to broaden support for his actions beyond the attention drawn to the immigration issue by the Latino community.