In Border City Talk, Obama Urges G.O.P. to Help Overhaul Immigration Law

Mr. Obama’s speech at a park within sight of the border with Mexico — and a billowing 162-foot-by-93-foot Mexican flag — was heavy with political overtones for 2012 and beyond, given the growing ranks of Latino voters in a number of swing states. He sought to reassure those increasingly frustrated voters of his commitment to liberalizing immigration laws as a moral and economic imperative, and to blame “border security first” Republicans in Congress for his inability to deliver on that promise.

“We have strengthened border security beyond what many believed was possible,” Mr. Obama said, citing increases since the George W. Bush administration in the amount of fencing and aerial surveillance and the number of border agents, National Guard troops, intelligence analysts and deportations of illegal immigrants.

His first stop here was at an inspection facility on the Rio Grande, one of the busiest of the 327 official ports of entry to the United States for cargo, vehicles and even walkers entering from Ciudad Juárez, a sprawling city afflicted by Mexico’s drug wars.

“We have gone above and beyond what was requested by the very Republicans who said they supported broader reform as long as we got serious about enforcement,” he added. “All the stuff they asked for, we’ve done.  But even though we’ve answered these concerns, I’ve got to say I suspect there are still going to be some who are trying to move the goal posts on us one more time” — to the point of seeking a moat and alligators, he joked. “That’s politics.”

Mr. Obama’s own politics were central to the trip, his first to the border since he was elected with 67 percent of the Latino vote, which makes up a significant and expanding portion of the electorate in battleground states like Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Nevada, New Mexico and North Carolina.

In Texas, where Republicans have dominated since the 1980s, Democrats likewise look to one day regain power through the state’s expanding Latino electorate — though not likely in 2012. Even so, broadcasts of Mr. Obama’s trip reached next door into New Mexico.

The visit, however, underscored a tension over Mr. Obama’s immigration record that colors his re-election prospects: his boasts of strengthening border security win him no credit among Republican lawmakers and only alienate many Latinos so long as he cannot deliver on his campaign promise to them — a path to citizenship for the estimated 11 million immigrants already here illegally, many of them for years.

“If they think that this is going to be the thing that mobilizes an increasingly disappointed Latino electorate, I think they’re wrong,” said Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice, a group advocating for liberalized immigration. “They are going to have to make some big administrative action to make up for the fact that he promised something big.”

Mr. Obama did not push comprehensive immigration legislation in his term’s first two years, when Democrats controlled Congress, and it has virtually no chance of passage now that Republicans have a House majority. And he does not plan to introduce such legislation now, to the disappointment of some advocates.

But in his speech, Mr. Obama reiterated his goals: a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants that would require them to come forward, pay taxes and a penalty, and learn English; legal status for foreigners who graduate from colleges here and want to remain and start businesses; and the so-called Dream Act, providing citizenship to young people who were brought to the United States as children and receive an education or want to enter the military.

Back in Washington, Congressional Republicans dismissed his proposals.

“Providing a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, as the president called for again today, without requiring illegal immigrants to return to their countries of origin and apply for legal status, is amnesty,” said Representative Elton Gallegly of California, the chairman of a House subcommittee on immigration. “Amnesty will not pass Congress, Mr. President.”