Obama's borders 

He has pushed immigration reform, Latinos upset and a security problem on the southern border: Now President Obama and his Democrats risk of losing their majority in the Senate.

A multimedia report by Sebastian Fischer and Sandra Sperber, Texas

When Barack Obama just once again promises that he will not give up the fight that he wants to pull the thing, here come the heckling: "We need help now!" Yes, he understood their deep frustration, the US president said. He parts.

Obama also needs help.

On 4 November, congressional elections in the US next Tuesday. Elections that will decide what the 44th president can still achieve in the remaining two years of his term. It does not look good.

According to surveys threatens the Democrats losing their majority in the Senate; the House of Representatives was conquered in 2010 by the Republicans, in their majority, there will probably not change. Obama is reaching its limits.

When the incident happened with the hecklers, it is the beginning of October. In an exhibition hall in the capital, Washington, the President speaks to Latino members of the democratic faction and influential supporters. Obama conducts political self-defense that night. After six years in office, he still has not met one of his key promises: a new immigration law. The promise to open up the eleven million illegal immigrants in the country a perspective on the US citizenship.

Twice the Latinos have supported Obama to the presidency: 2008 with 67 percent of their votes, even in 2012 with 71 percent. No group of voters in America is growing as fast as the Hispanic. Obama needs them in November, necessarily. It's about 25 million potential voters.

But they are difficult to mobilize, 2012 was not even one in two for the election. "Yes, we can" therefore, calls Obama in Washington his old campaign hit in the exhibition hall and glued back on it: "... if we choose to go" He says that for safety and again in Spanish.

As indicated by a magnifying glass to bundle America's current conflicts and debates in the fight for immigration reform and border security with Mexico:

the polarization of the political spectrum, the struggle for the American dream of a nation of immigrants, demographic change, which is expected to make the United States to the year 2040. Around most multicultural of all countries in the world, when the whites lose their majority. Six years ruled Barack Obama now in the White House. He has set What political signals? On the one hand, the President has granted by executive order for more than half a million immigrants a right to stay, who came as children or adolescents in the United States illegally. On the other hand, he has not let deport two million illegal immigrants. "Deporter-in-Chief" why call him the disappointed.

On one hand, Obama had announced to oppose the parliamentary permanent blockade of the Republicans before the election this November, more regulations. On the other hand, he has now postponed until after the election; End of the year is probably to be expected with executive orders, looking to give the illegal immigrants a better status.

Henry Cuellar is a Democrat, but Obama's critics.

But Obama's time is running out. "Either the president does it," says Henry Cuellar, "or he has broken his promise." Cuellar is the Congressman of the 28th District, Texas, in the southeast of America, on the border.

In the summer he has an open letter to the President written, as the "Border Crisis" was daily in the headlines; than a few months more than 50,000 children were apprehended at the border, who were sent by their parents in Guatemala, Honduras or El Salvador alone on the perilous journey to the supposedly promised land. Cuellar asked Obama, who was already in Texas for a visit to the border. As a symbol. Bush did it, Clinton also. The current president has not come. And Henry Cuellar, the deputies from the border town of Laredo, the times in its history belonged to Mexico, even to the United States, has received no reply. Not until today.

"The US public got the impression in the summer of chaos on the border," says Cuellar. Suddenly everyone wanted to talk about border security, but not on immigration reform. In July, according to surveys said two-thirds of Americans distrust Obama on this issue from. The situation on the southern border moved in the priority list of the older, white voters upwards. And this group is known to use their right to vote. Obama has since the double problem: Latinos and mobilized Republicans disappointed supporters.

The idea of ​​a basic immigration reform beyond executive order, he seems to have given up anyway, since a joint venture of Republican and Democratic senators failed. In 2013, although a compromise was reached and even passed a reform bill in the upper chamber congress - but until now denied the Republican-controlled House of Representatives a vote. Because next week is likely to change anything after the election. The compromise in detail:

temporary residence permit for the eleven million illegal immigrants who have to accept a penalty in return and pay extra taxes,

permanent residence permit after ten years, when language skills and work can be demonstrated,

then possibly US citizenship,

the border guards should be doubled to 40,000 troops and built more than one thousand kilometers of additional fence.

In plain language, legality for illegal immigrants on the one hand; Border close on the other hand, to minimize further illegal immigration.

More than 3000 km runs the border between Mexico and the United States through deserts, steppes, towns. Times straight, sometimes in serpentine lines. Last year, nearly 415,000 illegal border violators were arrested, far fewer than they did ten years ago. One third of the border is secured with fences, mainly in the western United States, in the east flows the Rio Grande. Many Republicans also want to build a fence.

The deputy Henry Cuellar in his heavy brown leather armchair with a Texas coat of arms at the top of the back rolls his eyes. Fence? "This is a solution to the 14th century." In Laredo at least they have built only a few meters of fencing. Cuellar is more concerned with technology, such as drones for aerial surveillance. His brother Martin has a similar view. Martin Cuellar is the sheriff of Laredo.

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Sandra Sperber

Viewed from Laredo of the capital Washington is far away. Like that morning in March 2009, to which the deputy Henry Cuellar now recalls. It is a reminder of the missed opportunity. At the time, Obama received him and his colleagues from the Hispanic Club in the banquet room of the White House. Because the Democrats at that time held both the House and Senate immigration reform seemed close enough to touch.

"We said: 'Mr. President, let us now make the reform, we control Congress, we have the Presidency'," says Cuellar. But Obama has said that he is very busy right now, health care reform and so on. "We do that later with the immigration" Yes, the President had said this, is Cuellar recalls. "And then we have lost the majority in Congress."

Therefore Obama remain today without compromise with the Republicans alone the executive arrangements. But which would have no guarantee to outlast his presidency.

Each successor can set the rules with a stroke of the pen aside.