Even as Amer­i­cans are start­ing to see pos­i­tive results from the Afford­able Care Act, another ini­tia­tive from Pres­i­dent Obama kicks in today. Begin­ning August 15, 2012, young adults who were brought to the United States ille­gally as chil­dren, and who sat­isfy a num­ber of cri­te­ria, can now apply to remain legally in the coun­try for two years. Tech­ni­cally, the appli­ca­tions are to request “deferred action” on con­sid­er­ing their cases for deportation.

One of the places these young adults can go to obtain an appli­ca­tion is at the web­site of U.S. Cit­i­zen­ship and Immi­gra­tion Ser­vices.

The Pres­i­dent announced this pro­gram on June 15, say­ing his admin­is­tra­tion “will stop deport­ing and begin grant­ing work per­mits to younger ille­gal immi­grants who came to the United States as chil­dren and have since led law-​​abiding lives.” Latino vot­ers account for five per­cent of the adult pop­u­la­tion in nearly half of U.S. states, and more than ten per­cent in eleven states. They can be a pow­er­ful vot­ing force in swing states like Nevada, Col­orado, New Mex­ico, and Florida.

The President’s change to the imple­men­ta­tion of immi­gra­tion pol­icy was mod­eled on the pro­posed Devel­op­ment, Relief, and Edu­ca­tion for Alien Minors, or DREAM Act. Ver­sions of this bill have been float­ing in Con­gress for years, most recently passed by the House in the lame-​​duck ses­sion of Decem­ber, 2010, but dying in the Sen­ate. The bill is pop­u­lar in many areas of the coun­try — even in Ari­zona; accord­ing to a recent poll, 73 per­cent of Ari­zo­nans sup­port it.

The Pres­i­dent is unable to change the law to pro­vide a path to cit­i­zen­ship for chil­dren who were brought to the coun­try ille­gally, as the DREAM Act would have done. But he can (and indeed, must) pro­vide guid­ance to the Immi­gra­tion and Nat­u­ral­iza­tion Ser­vice for pri­or­i­tiz­ing which cases of ille­gal pres­ence need to be pros­e­cuted most (or least) ener­get­i­cally. That is basi­cally what the June 15 announce­ment did. As of today, some­where between 800,000 and 1,500,000 peo­ple are eli­gi­ble for this deferment.

Since we are deep into the pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, it is rea­son­able to ask how — and if — this change in pol­icy will have an effect on the elec­tion. It clearly will not alter who can vote; none of the peo­ple who directly ben­e­fit from this change in pol­icy are cit­i­zens (by def­i­n­i­tion), which means they can’t vote. It’s unlikely their par­ents are cit­i­zens (in the vast major­ity of cases, those par­ents came to the coun­try ille­gally and brought their chil­dren, which is how the peo­ple who can apply for a defer­ment got here), so they can’t vote, either. Nor does this pol­icy pro­vide even any sort of even­tual path to cit­i­zen­ship, so none of the ben­e­fi­cia­ries under this pro­gram will expect to vote at any time in the future .

On the other hand, as men­tioned, the DREAM Act is pretty pop­u­lar, espe­cially among Latino vot­ers. A recent poll, taken before the President’s June 15 announce­ment, already showed he enjoys over­whelm­ing sup­port among Lati­nos as com­pared to for­mer Gov­er­nor Rom­ney. Both cam­paigns are tar­get­ing Lati­nos and His­pan­ics in their adver­tiz­ing, though there is some indi­ca­tion that the Rom­ney cam­paign has already accepted they are unlikely to make inroads into the President’s sub­stan­tial lead.

It seems likely that, par­tic­u­larly in closely-​​matched swing states, much of the elec­tion will be decided by enthu­si­asm — who comes to the polls. What this change in pol­icy can do is to fur­ther ener­gize His­panic and Latino vot­ers. This can’t help but assist the Pres­i­dent. It may be a per­fect exam­ple of ben­e­fit­ing by doing the right thing — doing well by doing good.

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