NEW YORK — President Barack Obama was coming off weeks of bad economic news and a string of gaffes — notably his much-maligned comment that “the private sector is doing fine” — when he pulled off a political gamble intended to rev up his declining fortunes five months before the presidential election.
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With an executive order issued Friday, he allowed some 800,000 illegal immigrants — those under the age of 31 who came to the United States as children, if they meet certain conditions — to remain in the country without fear of deportation. The order, which also allows them to work, was a dramatic move that rallied Latinos in such battleground electoral states as Florida, Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico and Virginia.
The temporary order reverses Mr. Obama’s previous position that he lacked the authority to bypass Congress, and it partly fulfills his 2008 campaign promise to reform the immigration system and open a path to citizenship for 11 million illegal immigrants, most of them Hispanic.
Not least, Mr. Obama put his presumptive Republican opponent in November, Mitt Romney, and other Republican candidates in a tough spot. Mr. Romney, who has warned that if his party does not appeal to Latinos “it spells doom for us,” had sided with anti-immigration conservatives during the Republican primaries, although he seemed to retreat from that hard line on Friday.
At the start of a bus tour of six swing states, Mr. Romney said, “I believe the status of young people who come here through no fault of their own is an important matter to be considered. I would like to seek legislation that deals with this issue. I think the action that the president took today makes it more difficult to reach that long-term solution.”
Mr. Romney may now jump on the bandwagon of Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, the popular conservative son of Cuban immigrants who is widely seen as a top candidate to join Mr. Romney on the Republican ticket. For some time now Mr. Rubio has been working on a legislative measure called Dream Act II, which would provide work permits to undocumented students and military personnel, a measure quite similar to Mr. Obama’s directive.
Mr. Obama’s move came just weeks after he made a public statement supporting same-sex marriage. It was, by any measure, a big deal. He was given credit for taking a political risk, although the risk was mitigated by national polls that show a slight majority of Americans now support gay marriage. Against that background, Mr. Obama’s statement doesn’t seem too politically dangerous, and it certainly solidifies support for him among gays, a demographic that was largely in his camp already.
Not surprisingly, aides to Mr. Obama denied that politics influenced the president’s decision on immigration (or on gay marriage, for that matter). But the analysts on the Sunday talk shows in America didn’t really believe that politics played no role in Friday’s decision. Though some saw the directive as a bold gamble that could yet backfire on Mr. Obama, it was difficult to argue that the president’s move would lead to a loss of conservative voters for whom illegal immigration is an important issue — voters who were unlikely to be supporting him anyway.
There was little question, however, that he helped consolidate his hold on the record 21.7 million Hispanics who are eligible to vote in 2012. (He received 67 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2008.)
But to make sure the Obama message gets across loud and clear, the White House planned a set of meetings with Hispanic activists over the weekend. On Monday Mr. Obama is expected to meet at the White House with a group of immigration advocates. To cap it all off, Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney are both scheduled to appear, separately, before Hispanic elected officials in Florida later this week.
An earlier version of this post misstated the age qualifications established by the Obama administration’s new policy allowing some younger immigrants to avoid deportation. It applies to people who came to the United States as children and were no more than 30 years old — in other words, younger than 31 — when the policy was changed by the administrative action. An earlier version of this post said the law pertained to people who were “under 30 years old.”