“This is what immigration reform under Obama has gotten us,” says Abdollahi, who traveled to Tacoma to rally public attention to Luna’s case. “The right to spend up to $5,000 to get a loved one out of jail. When Obama says he isn’t deporting dreamers, he’s lying.”

“Marco Rubio is being a lot more authentic with us,” Abdollahi added.

The positive response of young immigrants  to Rubio’s still-vague alternative to the Democrats’ DREAM Act is central to the changing politics of immigration in the 2012 presidential campaign. In a series of meetings in Washington, Rubio is shopping for support, hoping to put forward a legislative proposal in the next few weeks. The Washington Post endorsed the idea on Monday.

By flirting with Rubio, the DREAM activists — representing an estimated 1 million young Americans, or “dreamers,” who are now barred from a path to U.S. citizenship — have wrong-footed the Obama White House and given pause to reelection campaign officials who had been counting on Latinos to fall in line with the president’s reelection. They have also caught the interest of Republican strategists worried about Romney’s narrowing path for victory in November.

Rubio is expected to propose the creation of a non-immigrant visa that would ensure undocumented young people who don’t have criminal records would not be deported and could eventually become citizens. The original DREAM Act failed to pass  the Senate in 2010.

“We are going to support whoever will come out and talk about the issue,” said Gabby Pacheco, a 26-year-old special education teacher from Miami and DREAM Act activist. “Rubio realizes this is key for us. Even if he is only doing it for political reasons, we’re willing to listen.”

The dreamers are backed by Latino Democrats on Capitol Hill, who feel betrayed by the Obama administration’s boasts of deporting a record annual average of 400,000 people over the last four years. After a friendly if inconclusive meeting with Rubio, Rep. Luis Gutierrez of Illinois told Politico his liberal allies  accused him of being the Florida senator’s new “best friend.”

The Obama White House hates the idea. Last week, presidential advisors Celia Munoz and Valerie Jarrett tried to discourage the dreamers from embracing Rubio’s proposal, saying it put at risk the original DREAM Act, which laid out a specific path to citizenship. According to the Washington Post, they had a meeting with DREAM Act-eligible students in Washington, arguing that “Rubio had not demonstrated he could win support from fellow Republicans and that the president would use his clout to push an immigration plan next year. ”

Pacheco, who attended the meeting, was not impressed with the White House appeal.

“You can’t wait until next year if you’re getting deported this year,” she said.  She described the White House officials as “very strategic” in their opposition to Rubio. She said the dreamers asked Munoz and Jarrett if the president could stop the deportations by taking administrative action that would not need to be approved by Congress, as Florida immigration activist Cheryl Little recently wrote in the Miami Herald.

“The thing that surprised us was they said no,” Pacheco told me. “They said, practically, ‘We don’t have the power to do this.’We’re trying to find out if that is true.”

It isn’t true, says Laura Lichter, an attorney in Denver and president-elect of the American Immigration Lawyer’s Association.

“The Obama administration  could certainly be doing more and better to improve the situation for DREAM Act students and to make immigration law and policy predictable and fair for everybody,” Lichter said in a telephone interview. “Whether they’re willing to do that in any way that might look like reasonable treatment for the undocumented remains to be seen.”

Presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney, who has advocated “self-deportation” for the likes of Abdollahi and Luna and the estimated 1 million DREAM Act-eligible students, is noncommittal about Rubio’s idea. Romney’s hard-line immigration advisor, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, initially rejected the suggestion as “amnesty,” but has more recently said he can “work with” the Florida senator, a nod to the growing realization that running on a platform of “self-deportation” is Romney’s ticket to self-destruction among Latino voters in November.

Whether Rubio’s gambit can sway Republican votes on Capitol Hill is doubtful. House Speaker John Boehner described passage of such a bill this year as “difficult at best.” Helping the undocumented is not a priority for most non-Latino voters, according to Republican pollster Scott Rasmussen.

While elite Republicans like Haley Barbour have said positive things about Rubio’s idea, the conservative blogosphere is notably unenthusiastic. The Weekly Standard touted Rubio’s recent foreign policy speech while ignoring his much-publicized idea of helping young undocumented Americans closer to home. The National Review hyped Rubio as a Romney running mate without taking a stand  on his proposal “to give the children of illegal immigrants a visa to continue their studies.” Talk radio stalwarts like Rush Limbaugh and Hugh Hewitt have yet to mention Rubio’s plan, while Mickey Kaus, the Daily Caller’s anti-immigrant blogger, notes conservative intellectuals can only agree to disagree on the issue.

If the Republicans’ intellectual base seems stumped by Rubio’s gambit, the Democratic incumbent comes off as arrogant. In a recent interview with Telemundo, President Obama said:

This notion that somehow Republicans want to have it both ways — they want to vote against these laws [like Arizona and Alabama] and appeal to anti-immigrant sentiment … and then they come and say, ‘But we really care about these kids and we want to do something about it’ — that looks like hypocrisy to me.

To the dreamers, Obama is just as hypocritical. “A lot of folks want us to be against  it,” Abdollahi said. “At the same time we hear from Obama administration that they’re not deporting dreamers. They’re tricking us. That’s what makes us supportive of Rubio.”

The court’s decision, expected in June, is sure to roil an accelerating presidential campaign where immigration has already proven to be a potent issue — and possibly in unexpected ways. ”In terms of electoral politics, it’s a win-win for Obama,” says Antonio Gonzalez, president of William C. Velasquez Institute, a Latino public policy research organization. If the court throws out the law, Obama can claim vindication that immigration restrictionists have gone too far, Gonzalez says. If the court upholds the Arizona law, he can “condemn the decision and vow to fight other state laws,” a stance that is likely to be popular with Latinos who now make up 25 percent of the electorate and whose support is crucial to the president’s reelection prospects.

While upholding  the law would “give a shot in the arm to the politics of immigrant exclusion,” Gonzalez argues it would also limit Romney’s ability to expand his appeal to Latino voters, something that the candidate seems inclined to do.

During the primary season, Romney effectively blunted challenges from Texas Gov. Rick Perry and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich by portraying them as soft on illegal immigrants, the vast majority of whom are from Mexico and Central America. At the same time, polls showed Obama opening an enormous lead among Latino voters, prompting Romney to confide to supporters that his campaign was “doomed” unless he could win Latino votes. This week the Romney campaign distanced itself slightly from Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, author of the Arizona law and a Romney adviser. At the same time the candidate stumped with Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida who has said the Arizona law is “not a model” for the country.

“He’s trying to get out of the shackles” of his hard-line position, Gonzalez argues. “If law is upheld, it makes it much harder for him to do that.”

If the law is thrown out, “Romney has more of an opening to back up from his primary positions and talk about alternative plans,” says Chuck Rocha, executive director of the Latino Project, a Democratic political action committee. “If its not thrown out, he has to own it.”

Rocha says his PAC will use a decision favorable to Arizona “to appeal to Mexican-American voters who see this law as Republican overreach” in a dozen contested congressional elections from Florida to California.

Meanwhile, immigration restrictionists talk bravely that Romney will benefit among the general electorate, if not with Latinos, if the law is upheld.

“If Romney holds firm, we know there’s a broad activist base across the country that is highly motivated and that doesn’t want to see taxpayers pay for services for people who have no right to be here,” says Dan Stein of Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), which supports the Arizona law.

Stein is right that restrictionist laws are increasingly popular. Five states (Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, Utah and Indiana) have adopted similar laws, but have been enjoined from enforcing them. FAIR says six other states are actively considering them. But they have also mobilized resistance from business interests. When Rubio served as Speaker of the Florida House, Arizona-style immigration legislation never got out of committee. Even in solidly Republican Texas and Mississippi, restrictionists could not get an Arizona-style blll approved this year.

Chris Newman, general counsel for National Day Laborer Network in Los Angeles, isn’t so sure, however, that the case will help Obama. He think a decision favorable to Arizona would “put Obama in a tough spot.” While the Obama administration has fought the states seeking to establish their own immigration policies, it has also carried out record numbers of deportations, including children.

“He’ll have to make normative arguments why Arizona law is immoral and unjust and he’ll have a hard time doing that because many parts of the law track his own policy. His signature policy has sought to sue local police as a ‘force multiplier’ for immigration enforcement. Arizona policies are a symptom of that force multiplication.”

“The administration,” he says, “has sought to benefit from the misery imposed on immigrants on Arizona.”

The political impact of the court’s decision may be most decisive in two swing states where the immigration issue is most hotly contested: Missouri, where the legislature is considering an Arizona-style bill, and Arizona itself, where the devastating effects of the law on families with undocumented members is driving so many Latinos away from the Republican Party that the Obama campaign now dreams of winning the state in November.

“The issue is not going to go away,” says Stein. “If anything its hotter and more robust than ever.”

Romney’s desire to maneuver is transparent. When he hired Ed Gillespie, former Bush White House pollster and immigration moderate, the Hill newspaper saw ” a sign the campaign will heavily court Hispanic voters — perhaps at the expense of immigration hard-liners in the party.” Then Romney allowed himself to be overheard telling supporters that “we have to get Hispanic voters to vote for our party” and warning that overwhelming Hispanic support for Obama “spells doom for us.” He also mouthed approving sounds about Marco Rubio’s pitch for a Republican version of the DREAM Act. Republican immigration advocate Tamar Jacoby pronounced herself “thrilled.”

But the perils of the pivot emerged when Romney’s campaign tried to Etch A Sketch away the candidate’s working relationship with Kris Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state and immigration hard-liner. It was Kobach who persuaded Romney to advocate “self-deportation” as the solution to the presence of 11 million undocumented immigrants in the country. When a campaign spokesperson told Politico on Monday that Kobach is not a campaign “advisor” but a “supporter,” Kobach responded by telling Think Progress that his relationship with the campaign has not changed. Then he upped the ante by telling WaPo’s Greg Sargent that Rubio’s idea is an unacceptable variation on amnesty and he expects Romney to reject it.

How long can Kris Kobach maintain de facto control of Romney’s immigration message? With Romney’s Latino poll numbers sinking toward single digits and Gillespie taking a larger role in the campaign, it may not be long. Restrictionist blogger Mickey Kaus thinks Romney is most likely to make a “targeted concession” such as backing a variation on the DREAM Act. Rubio, by most accounts, is planning to introduce a bill to legalize the status of high-achieving undocumented students in coming weeks with an eye toward forcing a Senate floor vote in the fall.

Both pro-and anti-immigration advocates deride Rubio’s idea as a stunt, and, depending on its language, it may be.  But the Romney campaign has no better card to play. “The dreamers,” as the students call themselves, are held in high esteem by the Latinos, nine out ten of whom  support for the DREAM Act. And fortunately for Romney, two leading student groups that have fought for the DREAM Act say they are open to Rubio’s idea.

“We definitely support the concept,” Mohammad Abdollah of DreamActivist.org told Salon. “From everything we’ve heard, it sounds like something we could support. We need relief. If it comes from a Democratic or a Republican proposal, for us it doesn’t matter.”

Gaby Pacheo of United We Dream, which is supported by the Service Employees International Union, which has endorsed Obama, was more cautious.

“We’re willing to entertain the idea,” she said. “We’re glad to see a Republican coming forward on this issue. We want to see what the bill says and who are the Republicans who will also support it. Rubio is going to need support not just in the Senate but in the House as well. Where are Mitch McConnell and John Boehner?” The message seems clear. Without Republican support in the House, Rubio’s measure cannot become law and if it can’t become law it will get no help from its putative beneficiaries.

And therein lie the limits of Romney’s ability to pivot on the immigration issue: his allies. To send Latino voters a new message in the fall, he needs the cooperation of Kris Kobach and the Republican congressional leadership, neither of whom is inclined to give it.

The anti-immigration forces say pandering to Latinos who won’t vote Republican anyway will be less effective for Romney than running hard against Obama’s economic record. This strategy has its limits too. The post-2008 downturn, it turns out, has been less severe for Latinos than for whites. A Pew Hispanic Center study found Latinos lost less than whites in the 2007-09 recession and gained more in the 2009-2011 recovery. Latinos are now gaining jobs at twice the rate of whites. So the economic issue is not as sharp as it might be. Besides, wrote Ali Noorani of National Immigration Forum in a column for Fox News, “no one is going to listen to your economic message if you want to deport their mother.”

Obama’s pitch to Latinos is an ethnically flavored variation on his general election message: I saved you from disaster and delivered benefits.

President Obama has spent the first three years of his term working to restore economic security to the middle class and Latino community. He’s kept nearly 2 million Latinos out of poverty, doubled the amount spent on Pell Grants so 150,000 more Latino students can afford their educations. And by 2014, Obamacare will provide health coverage to 9 million Latinos who are currently uninsured.

Romney’s pitch to Latinos? It’s a work in progress.

Gus from Little Green Footballs found documents showing O’Sullivan was on the board of the “Lexington Research Institute Limited,” aka the VDARE Foundation, from 2006-2010. During that time, VDARE helped found nativist site “Alternative Right” with a $35,000 grant. Alternative Right is edited by Richard B. Spencer, yet another racist/racialist white nationalist.

O’Sullivan was demoted from editorship by National Review ouster-in-chief William F. Buckley during a 1997 purge of Peter Brimelow, a virulent anti-immigration writer (and English immigrant) O’Sullivan championed who went on to found VDARE. VDARE has published a wide variety of extremist white nationalists, like Jared Taylor and Sam Francis.

O’Sullivan is still on the masthead at the National Review, and he was published defending Derbyshire at length at NRO a few days ago.

O’Sullivan says Derbyshire’s “satire” of “anti-white racism” sadly went a bit too far:

It therefore strengthens the anti-white racism it is meant to satirize which, as it happens, is a growing problem in the U.S. — not in the suburbs or backwoods but in the corporate executive suites, the media elites, the courts, the bureaucracy, and of course the entire industry of sensitivity training which used to go under the more honest title of “Political Reeducation” in the gulag.

Yes, “anti-white racism” is obviously a huge and growing threat in our corporate executive suites, as any glance at the Fortune 500 will demonstrate.

Having allowed that Derbyshire’s piece was sloppy and a bit racist, O’Sullivan goes on to defend each point anyway. Sure, Derbyshire believes that black people are innately criminal and stupid, but is that really a fireable offense? He might be right!

After half-purging O’Sullivan more than a decade ago, what possible reason is there to keep him around to embarrassingly defend his more explicitly awful colleagues? Especially while he’s working with the wackos at VDARE.

With Washington unlikely to take up immigration reform any time soon, some immigrants, like activists in the Occupy and LGBT movements, are turning to more confrontational tactics. Young undocumented immigrants across the country have come out as “undocumented and unafraid” in the most conspicuous of places: in front of the Alabama Capitol; in Maricopa County, Ariz., home of Sheriff Joe Arpaio; in front of federal immigration courts; and even inside ICE offices, processing centers, and detention centers. While they sometimes have specific causes, such as Orellana’s release, they also had a larger demand: that the civil and human rights of all undocumented immigrants be recognized and respected.

This is a marked change in goals and tactics from just one or two years ago, when the DREAM Act, which would have given some young undocumented immigrants a path to securing legal status, was the main immigration issue. Young activists, including many potential beneficiaries who are known as DREAMers, organized, rallied, held sit-ins, and undertook hunger strikes. A small group even marched from Florida to Washington, D.C., to press for its enactment. But it failed in Congress. Since then, students like Chairez and Lee are dreaming bigger and bolder. They aren’t just arguing that DREAMers like themselves — college students with clean records whose parents brought them to the U.S. when they were children — should be given a path to citizenship. They are helping to break down the artificial divisions — including those made by people who consider themselves immigrant advocates — between “model” immigrants (i.e., DREAMers) and others. Activists are forcing ICE to live up to its word that it is focusing its efforts on deporting “dangerous” criminals and not DREAMers. “We believe that regardless of [Miguel’s] immigration status, he should be treated as a human being,” Chairez shouted into a megaphone while seated in the street during the demonstration. “We have human rights.”

Youth-led immigrants-rights groups have organized in support of such efforts. The National Immigrant Youth Alliance has published an online “Coming Out Guide” and sponsored a “Coming Out of the Shadows” week this month. The movement has caught the attention of traditional immigrants-rights groups. National Council of La Raza is cautiously on board, stressing that coming out is an individual choice. “For many of the students this is their way of moving their advocacy forward,” says Laura Vazquez, a legislative analyst at NCLR. “We think it has been tremendously helpful for individual students who take that choice and make that decision.” However, some groups, like the American Immigration Council, see the tactic as too dangerous. “[The AIC] would never recommend to anyone that they put themselves at risk,” says communications director Wendy Sefsaf.

Yet, increasingly, young undocumented immigrants are doing just that and insisting that they will no longer remain silent. So far, according to activists, none of the recent acts of civil disobedience have resulted in deportation, but the threat remains very real as the Obama administration continues to deport young undocumented immigrants, including those whose cases have received considerable publicity. Young activists are well aware that any kind of legislative reform in the short-term, and especially before this fall’s elections, is highly unlikely. 

They’re using their actions, however, to raise awareness and funding in support of their cause. In Philadelphia, within hours of Chairez and Lee’s arrest other DREAMers kicked off a well-orchestrated publicity campaign. Emails were sent from Chairez and Lee’s accounts stating, “If you are reading this email I have been arrested in a planned act of civil disobedience.” Dream Activist Pennsylvania, an organization of which both are members, sent out messages to followers on Twitter and posted videos of their arrest, as well as video messages Chairez and Lee recorded prior to the action. The organization also sent out messages soliciting donations for their bail. News of the arrests spread via television, radio and English- and Spanish-language print media outlets.

By engaging in direct confrontations and being more open about their undocumented status, these activists hope to pave the way for broader changes than the ones the DREAM Act would have achieved.