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 Obama told congressional leaders on Friday he would try to ease
some restrictions on undocumented immigrants, despite warnings from
Republican leaders that such actions would "poison the well" or
would be "a red flag in front of a bull".
The meeting came after Obama's Democratic Party was punished in
midterm elections on Tuesday. Republicans seized the U.S. Senate and
kept a majority in the House of Representatives, in what Obama said
was a message from voters who held him responsible for how
Washington worked, or didn't.
In an interview on CBS' "Face the Nation," Obama said he had watched
while the U.S. Senate produced a bipartisan immigration reform bill,
only to have it not taken up by House Republican Speaker John
Boehner.
Obama said he had told Boehner if he could not get it done by year's
end, the White House was going to have to take steps to improve the
system.
"Everybody agrees the immigration system's broken. And we've been
talking about it for years now in terms of fixing it," Obama said in
the interview, according to a CBS transcript.
 U.S. borders needed to be secure, the legal immigration system
needed to be more efficient and there needed to be a path to legal
status for the 11 million undocumented immigrants.
"We don't have the capacity to deport 11 million people -- everybody
agrees on that," he said.
Obama insisted he was not telling Republicans they had run out of
time or trying to circumvent them.
"The minute they pass a bill that addresses the problems with
immigration reform, I will sign it and it supersedes whatever
actions I take," Obama said in the interview.
"And I'm encouraging them to do so ... on parallel track we're going
to be implementing an executive action.
"But if in fact a bill gets passed, nobody's going to be happier
than me to sign it, because that means it will be permanent rather
than temporary."
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Without any changes, the government will continue to misallocate
resources, deport people who should not be deported and not deport
those who are dangerous, he said.
Any unilateral action promises to draw the ire of Republicans in
Congress. U.S. Senator John Barrasso, the No. 4 Republican in the
Senate, told Reuters on Friday members of Congress had told Obama
that would be a "toxic decision".
"It will hurt cooperation on every issue," Barrasso told "Fox News
Sunday".
"What the president does over the next two months is going to set
the tone for the next two years."
Representative Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and
Government Reform Committee, said on ABC's "This Week" he hoped
Obama would delay action "and have a real comprehensive discussion
about what’s possible, because a great deal is possible on
immigration reform.”
(Reporting by Doina Chiacu, Howard Schneider and Valerie Volcovici;
Editing by Andrew Roche and Dominic Evans)
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