U.S. President Barack Obama said on Thursday that Republicans are committing political suicide by resisting comprehensive immigration reform and vowed to go ahead with his plans to loosen some migration rules on his own after Nov. 4 elections.
Obama's comment came as he began a two-day West Coast trip centered mostly around raising money for Democratic congressional candidates in Los Angeles.
His first such event is scheduled to be at the Los Angeles home of actress Gwyneth Paltrow on Thursday night.
Speaking to tech startup executives at a town hall event at Cross Campus, an organization devoted to helping entrepreneurs create jobs for young Americans, Obama repeatedly attacked his political opponents as he tries to fend off a Republican takeover of the U.S. Senate in the upcoming elections.
On immigration, Obama said he would proceed with plans after the elections to do what he can within his constitutional power to help undocumented workers in the United States.
He said he would specifically make the H1B visa system more efficient "to encourage more folks to stay here."
Obama held back from issuing executive actions on immigration at the end of the summer because of public discontent with how he was handling a surge of child migrants who swept across the U.S. southern border. Obama suggested this problem was largely under control.
He said a failure to act on comprehensive legislation by Republicans will damage them with an important voting bloc.
"If they were thinking long-term politically, it is suicide for them not to do this, because the demographics of the country are such where you are going to lose an entire generation of immigrants" who feel that the Republican Party "does not care about me or my life," Obama said.
"I think the smarter Republicans understand this," he said.
Obama said Tea Party conservatives are pressuring the Republican rank and file not to take action in the short run, but that he believes reform legislation will eventually pass during the remaining two years of his presidency.
"I think it'll happen over the next two years that eventually Congress will see the light because the logic of it is too compelling," Obama said.
Obama's fundraiser at Paltrow's home was the 56th such event he has attended this year. He has largely been relegated to raising money for Democratic congressional candidates rather than appearing with him out of concern his unpopularity could damage them.
Still, the huge amounts of money he is raising is helping pay for campaign advertising that Democrats are using in the last weeks of the campaign.
