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BOCA RATON, Fla. The conventional wisdom in the Republican Party is changing.

Less than two years ago, party leaders solemnly declared after an exhaustive study that the GOP "must embrace and champion comprehensive immigration reform." It was critical for the party's survival, they said, to address an issue that was paramount to the nation's surging Latino population. But as President Obama issued a sweeping immigration order last week, some of the Republican Party's most prominent governors likely presidential candidates among them described immigration reform as little more than an afterthought.

"This issue is probably not in the top 10 of most voters in America," Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who is considering a 2016 White House bid, said alongside nodding colleagues at the Republican Governors Association annual conference in Florida. Walker dismissed the Democratic president's order that shields as many as 5 million immigrants from deportation as a trap designed to divert attention "from the real issues in this country."

The comments reflect a dramatic shift among some GOP leaders emboldened by this month's midterm success just as the next presidential contest gets underway. Having claimed the Senate majority in the low-turnout November campaign, the sense of urgency that dominated Republican leadership after losing the White House in 2012 has all but disappeared.

The evolution presents risks, however, for Republicans competing in a 2016 election that will draw a much larger and more diverse electorate especially in a handful of swing states where the Latino population is growing quickly.

The contrast between the parties has never been clearer.

Prospective Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton praised Obama's order as a "historic step."

"Now," she said in a tweet, "let's turn to permanent bipartisan reform."

And as Latino leaders cheered the order, potential Republican presidential candidates threatened lawsuits and perhaps a government shutdown but no immigration policy of their own.

The Republican criticism has focused on the president's decision to act unilaterally, although political strategists acknowledged the distinction may matter little to Latino voters come 2016.

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GOP wisdom shifts focus on immigration

Tech companies lobbies all the time for tax reform, patent reform. But usually, it's in the form of big checks and quiet back room meetings.

Immigration was different the issue where business leaders decided to ally with Latino community groups and labor unions. And now that President Obama has issued an executive action, the tech sector is sorting out its next steps.

Love Song Goes Quiet

For a while, it seemed, Silicon Valley and Washington DC were singing each other a love song.

In his 2012 State of the Union Address, President Obama said America needs foreign technology workers to stay here and build multi-billion-dollar businesses. He cited an iconic leader: "[We] should support everyone who's willing to work, and every risk-taker and entrepreneur who aspires to become the next Steve Jobs."

Meanwhile, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg started giving his own campaign speeches, not just for visas to hire more foreign software engineers, but also for tomato pickers and dishwashers. He bridged the deep divide between blue- and white-collar lobbies.

He even recruited CEO friends from LinkedIn and DropBox to form the lobbying start-up Fwd.us and said about the new undertaking: "I was really heartened to see just how easy it was to get so many of the leaders [of] a lot of the great companies out here to sign on to support not just the issues that would benefit their companies, but full comprehensive immigration reform."

But after the President's latest speech on immigration, it sounds like there's less love in the air.

Zuckerberg did not applaud the move to grant temporary visas to 4 or 5 million immigrants. In his own Facebook page, he announced the speech, but then stayed silent about its contents. The interim chief of Fwd.us, Todd Schulte, says the action was a step in the right direction but "we all agree we have to keep our eye on the ball. Legislation is the ultimate prize."

The company Facebook issued a cautious statement: "We look forward to hearing more specifics about the President's plan and how it will impact the skills gap that threatens the competitiveness of the tech sector." Similarly, Yahoo says it's reviewing the details. Meanwhile companies that are typically outspoken on immigration policy, including Google and Microsoft, did not comment.

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Action On Immigration Meets Silence, Skepticism In Silicon Valley

President Obamas executive action on immigration will likely dramatically alter the lives of some 5 million people who will soon be eligible for temporary deportation relief. But for nearly 7 million undocumented immigrants who wont qualify for protection, their fate will lie largely in the hands of the administrations new enforcement scheme, the Priority Enforcement Program (PEP).

Deportation relief remains the most far-reaching and politically sensitive part of Obamas executive action package unveiled last week. But the end of Secure Communities, the widely criticized federal immigration enforcement program tasked with rooting out deportable criminals, and the emergence of PEP, is at the heart of what Obama said was a focus on deporting felons, not families and criminals, not children. While analysts say it will take time to see if PEP rectifies the problems Secure Communities presented, there is tentative hopefulness about the new program.

This is the most significant step forward [in immigration enforcement] on trying to focus on real threats to communities that Ive seen during the entire Obama administration, said Ben Johnson, executive director of the American Immigration Council. Im cautiously optimistic that theres a commitment to focus their resources on real criminals, that theyre finally getting it. While part of the new program is based on branding, he said, a lot of it is substance.

Under Secure Communities, which became deeply unpopular during its six-year run, local law enforcement shared fingerprint data of people booked in local jails with the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, which would in turn use that information to locate and deport immigrants with criminal violations. But over the years, the program became known for sweeping up immigrants with low-level offenses, such as traffic violations, as well as those never charged with any crimes, into deportation proceedings. The result, immigration advocates said, was a collapse of trust between communities and law enforcement.

Local mayors and governors also soured on the program: Over the past year nearly 300 jurisdictions across the country have passed laws limiting their cooperation with ICE and requiring that local law enforcement only turn over immigrants with serious criminal convictions or a judge-issued warrant to ICE authorities.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson has himself admitted Secure Communities shortcomings. The reality is the program has attracted a great deal of criticism, is widely misunderstood and is embroiled in litigation; its very name has become a symbol for general hostility toward the enforcement of our immigration laws, he wrote in a memo detailing the end of the program last week.

PEP will continue to allow local police and ICE to share fingerprint data of immigrants booked in jail, but under the new scheme, only those with actual criminal convictions can be targeted for deportation. By moving to a post-conviction model, it takes one of the encouragements of racial profiling out of [the program], said Mark Fleming, national litigation coordinator for the National Immigrant Justice Center. The focus on convicted criminals could slash the number of immigrants transferred over to ICE custody by as much as 50 percent, he said.

But that doesnt necessarily mean that PEP will focus only on deporting serious, violent criminals. One of the priority categories for deportation laid out by the Department of Homeland Security includes immigrants convicted of an aggravated felony, a broad class of crimes under federal immigration law. While the term originally covered murder, federal drug trafficking and trafficking of specific types of arms, over the years it has enveloped lesser crimes such as petty theft, perjury, forgery and tax evasion.

Unfortunately, immigration law continues to be a huge problem in focusing on really bad actors because the definitions under immigration law have been expanded so dramatically, Johnson said. In the interest of focusing on the worst of the worst, youre going to continue to run into the ridiculously broad definitions under immigration law until Congress changes it.

Former ICE director John Morton issued a series of memos in 2011 directing agents to exercise discretion in deciding which immigrants to target for deportation, taking threats to public safety and community ties in the U.S. into consideration. But it's still largely up to ICE agents to utilize that discretion.

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Immigration Reform 2014: Will Obama's New Immigration Enforcement Plan Fix Secure Communities' Problems?

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