Immigration | featured news

President Obama's order Friday suspending deportations for some young illegal immigrants sent a charge through social media over the weekend, with both the president and his Republican challenger seeing steep spikes in online chatter about them. According to the social media analysis firm VoterTide, about 52,000 messages about Obama were posted to Twitter Friday, a 74% jump over his daily average of about 30,000 and the highest number of mentions since he announced his support for gay marriage May 9. The firm did not offer an estimate of how many of these tweets were positive or negative.

Mitt Romney is refusing to say that he would overturn President Barack Obama's new policy allowing some young illegal immigrants to stay in the United States... before the Iowa caucuses in January, when he faced the challenge of winning over the right-wing base of the GOP, he pledged to veto legislation backed by Democrats that would have created a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants brought to the U.S. as children.

For Angelica Salas, it was a long time coming. The Obama administration's announcement that it would stop deporting illegal immigrants who were brought here as children was the culmination of more than a decade of persistent political organizing by Salas and her fellow immigrant rights advocates.

President Obama’s plan to offer work permits to some young illegal immigrants unleashed hope undercut with some wariness about the policy’s implementation.

It boosts his reelection campaign among Latinos and young people and amounts to an end run around Republican rivals. By calling a halt to the deportation of hundreds of thousands of young illegal immigrants, President Obama not only helps himself politically with two groups vital to his reelection — Latinos and young people — but also shows the advantage that comes with a seat in the Oval Office.

The Obama administration will relax enforcement of deportation rules for young people brought to the United States without legal status, a softening of immigration policy that is likely to appeal to Hispanic voters in an election year.

In oral arguments, both liberal and conservative justices indicate they may maintain a provision of the Arizona law that tells police to check the immigration status of people they stop.

The Pew Hispanic Center said that not only did immigration come to a near halt after years of growth but also the number of Mexicans leaving rose sharply.

Charles Garcia says GOP candidates' stances on immigration give President Obama an opportunity to rack up big vote totals among Latinos.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer says President Obama was "somewhat thin-skinned" and "tense" in a testy greeting caught on camera on a Phoenix-area tarmac.