Obama eyes higher profile role on immigration

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama's prospects for a sweeping legislative victory this year now rest almost solely on the immigration overhaul working its way through Congress. But immigration's tricky politics have created a dilemma for a president fighting for an issue he considers central to his legacy.

If Obama is too closely aligned with the legislation, it could scare away Republicans wary of appearing to hand the president a win. But if he stays on the sidelines and the overhaul runs into trouble on Capitol Hill, Obama likely will be criticized for not using his presidential powers to fight for votes, as he was following the recent failure of gun control measures he championed.

In the coming weeks the White House will test whether Obama can take on a more public role in the immigration debate after largely ceding the issue to Congress for much of the year. The president will ramp up his immigration-related travel this spring and summer, including a trip this week to Mexico and Costa Rica. The White House also is planning to use Spanish-language media to bolster public support for a comprehensive bill.

Still, Obama signaled during a White House news conference Tuesday that his primary talking point will be that he's backing a bill drafted by the Senate's so-called Gang of Eight, a group of four Democrats and four Republicans.

"I've been impressed by the work that was done by the Gang of Eight," Obama said. "The bill that they produced is not the bill that I would have written — there are elements of it that I would change — but I do think that it meets the basic criteria that I laid out from the start."

Immigration reform gained little traction in Congress during Obama's first term, in part because of opposition from GOP lawmakers. But the November election changed the political calculus for some Republicans, who watched Hispanic voters overwhelmingly side with Obama and Democrats as they increased their share of the national electorate.

At the request of the Gang of Eight, Obama kept a low-profile as the Senate working group set about the delicate task of crafting a draft bill earlier this year. The potential damage caused by White House involvement was underscored when a copy of Obama's own draft bill was leaked in February, raising suspicions among Republicans about his motivations and threatening to upend the effort.

But now that the Gang of Eight bill is public and is winning some Republican support, White House advisers say there's less risk in Obama taking on a larger public role in the debate too.

The focus on immigration in the capital comes as rallies are expected in dozens of cities around the country Wednesday in what has become an annual cry for easing the nation's immigration laws.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, a favorite of conservatives and potential GOP presidential candidate in 2016, is one if the bill's architects, as is Arizona's Republican Sen. John McCain. And even in the Republican-led House, where an immigration overhaul faces a steeper challenger, the Gang of Eight measure has won praise from House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis.

The bill would strengthen border security, allow tens of thousands of new high- and low-skilled workers into the country, require all employers to check their workers' legal status and provide an eventual path to citizenship for some 11 million immigrants now here illegally.

The measure is similar to the immigration principles Obama outlined in January during a visit to Las Vegas, his only immigration-focused trip of the year, though there are key differences. For example, the Senate bill makes the pathway to citizenship contingent on securing the border, which Obama opposes, and does not recognize gay couples, which Obama supports.

Many immigration advocates say they support Obama getting more involved in the debate as the draft bill weaves its way through the Senate Judiciary Committee, and likely to the Senate floor.

"He needs to be an advocate and push for the bill in the Senate to make sure this gets done," Eliseo Medina of the Service Employees International Union said of the president. "We need continued sustained pressure from all facets."

McCain also welcomed the prospect of a more proactive Obama, saying the president is committed to being heavily engaged. But the Arizona Republican, who has spoken with Obama about the immigration negotiations several times in recent weeks, added that the president "doesn't want to harm the passage of the bill either. And I believe him."

But some Republicans remain suspicious of the president's efforts and say he's trying to sink the bill in order to use the legislative failure for political gain.

"I think the president wants to campaign on immigration reform in 2014 and 2016," Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said in an interview with CBS News. "I think the reason the White House is insisting on a path to citizenship for those who are here illegally is because the White House knows that insisting on that is very likely to scuttle the bill."

Obama advisers insist he would rather be able to claim victory on the immigration overhaul that has eluded him than use a failure as leverage in the midterm elections — a proposition that has no guarantee of working in his favor.

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Associated Press writer Jim Kuhnhenn contributed to this report.

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Follow Julie Pace on Twitter: http://twitter.com/jpaceDC

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Higher fire risk for Arizona, New Mexico

A combination of high winds and low humidity pose an extreme risk for fire in Arizona and New Mexico on Friday.Both states are under a fire watchDays after evacuation is lifted, Eagar residents prepare to leave againMonument Fire in southern Arizona burns 11,600 acres and is 17% containedMonument Fire forces the evacuation of hundreds

(CNN) -- Arizona and New Mexico face a heightened risk of fire as strong winds are forecast to sweep through both states Friday, according to the National Weather Service.

The relentless winds threaten to spread an 11,600-acre fire in southern Arizona that torched 40 homes and forced the evacuation of hundreds on Thursday.

The winds could undo some of the progress made by crews battling the Wallow blaze that has burned an area of the Apache - Sitgreaves National Forest.

"Yes it is a threat. Anything could happen," said Terry Stemmler, a spokesman for the Southwest Incident Management Team, which is battling the latter of the two blazes.

Stemmler said crews are faced with four straight days of red flag warnings that started Thursday with the return of strong winds to a dry region. A red flag warning means weather conditions -- high winds and low humidity -- pose an extreme risk for fire.

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"This whole part of the country is in extreme drought," said Dale Thompson, a spokesman for fire crews. "Grass will take off like gasoline."

The National Weather Service placed such a warning on much of eastern Arizona, from the Mexico border to the Utah state line for Friday.

It issued a red flag alert for much of western and northeastern New Mexico, while the remainder of that state was put under a fire weather watch, where the risk is less severe.

High winds sparked a spot fire Thursday just south of the town of Eagar, Arizona. The incident prompted authorities to issue a pre-evacuation notice to residents of 230 homes on the south side of the city, Stemmler said. That means the residents should prepare to abandon their homes if ordered to do so.

Eagar residents just returned home Sunday, four days after the spread of the so-called Wallow fire forced them to evacuate.

As of Thursday night, the Wallow Fire had scorched 487,016 acres in eastern Arizona and western New Mexico, the vast majority of it in the Apache - Sitgreaves National Forest on the Arizona side, authorities said.

The blaze, which is 33% contained, became the largest wildfire in Arizona on Tuesday.

To the south, the much smaller Monument Fire has burned 11,600 acres and is only 17% contained, according to InciWeb, the online interagency incident database.

The Monument Fire roared in the Huachuca Mountains near the Mexican border south of Sierra Vista, Arizona, on Thursday. Wind gusts of up to 35 miles per hour were reported in the area, and people in 1,700 of approximately 3,230 homes were ordered out.

Some residents did not want to leave their homes.

"We had a situation where a family said they were staying behind," said Carol Capas, a spokeswoman for the Cochise County Sheriff's Office. "We got a teenage daughter who later called us from that home and said she didn't want to be there so our officers went over there and got her out."

The sheriff's office urged residents to be patient.

"Public safety officials are doing everything possible to get people to safety in a timely and professional manner, so the cooperation of the public is critical," the agency said.

CNN's Samuel Gardner III, Dave Alsup and Phil Gast contributed to this report.

CNN

Stocks follow LinkedIn IPO higher (AP)

By DANIEL WAGNER and DAVID K. RANDALL, AP Business Writers Daniel Wagner And David K. Randall, Ap Business Writers – 28 mins ago

NEW YORK – The biggest Internet IPO since Google combined with a drop in oil prices to send the broad stock market higher.

Shares of social networking company LinkedIn jumped 109 percent to $94.25 on the first day they began trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol "LNKD." The debut is seen as a preview of other social networking sites that are expected to start trading during the next year. The list of candidates includes the online messaging service Twitter, game maker Zynga, and the biggest social network of all, Facebook.

"LinkedIn represents the first opportunity for the average investor to participate in what looks like a lasting, powerful trend of social media," said Lawrence Creatura, a portfolio manager at Federated Investors. "They're frothy with excitement, and that's being imputed into the share price."

LinkedIn finished the day with a gigantic price-to-earnings ratio of 554, a valuation reminiscent of Internet stocks during the late 1990s tech bubble. By comparison, the average price-to-earnings ratio of technology companies in the S&P 500 index like Apple Inc. and Google Inc. is 15.

Sumeet Jain, a principal with venture investing firm CMEA Capital, said LinkedIn's IPO suggests that the number of mergers and acquisitions will increase this year as social networking companies grow, a potential boon for the stock market.

LinkedIn is "going to have to be quite aggressive" to meet investors' lofty expectations, Jain said. "All the rest of the companies in the pipeline, when they're all public companies they will be extraordinarily active acquirers as well."

The Dow Jones industrial average rose 45.14, or 0.4 percent, to close at 12,605.32. The S&P 500 gained 2.92, or 0.2 percent, to 1,343.60. The Nasdaq composite index rose 8.31, or 0.3 percent, to 2,823.31.

Oil prices fell back below $100 a barrel after an international agency said there is an "urgent need" for refineries to produce more gasoline and bring down pump prices in order to prevent a downturn in the global economy. Delta Air Lines Inc. rose 4.1 percent and JetBlue Airways Corp. rose 1.4 percent on expectations that their fuel costs would decrease.

Oil prices have fallen about 13 percent since the beginning of May as part of a broad-sell off in commodities due to fears that the economy is slowing. Despite LinkedIn's gains, concerns about the economy weighed on the market again Thursday.

The National Association of Realtors said fewer people purchased previously occupied homes in April. The Conference Board's outlook for future economic activity decreased for the first time since June 2010. And the Philadelphia Federal Reserve said that its measure of manufacturing activity slumped to its lowest reading since October.

The mixed news confirmed investors' belief that economic growth could be slow in the coming months. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note had risen as high as 3.24 percent following the positive jobs news but was back down to 3.17 percent, just below the rate it was trading at late Wednesday. Bond yields tend to rise when investors anticipate stronger economic growth.

"The fact that yields are still up today, even after this relatively weak set of data, tells me that people have factored in" expectations that the economy will grow more slowly this quarter, said Paul Zemsky, chief investment officer of multi-asset strategies for ING Investment Management.

With little fresh economic or corporate data expected in the next two weeks, the market will be "pretty much trading sideways unless something happens to throw people for a loop again," Zemsky said.

Stocks opened higher after the Department of Labor reported that applications for unemployment dropped more than expected. Indexes gave up those early gains after three negative reports on the economy came out at midmorning.

In a sign that the U.S. consumer recovery remains uneven, Big Lots Inc. fell nearly 11 percent after news reports that it decided not to sell itself. The Wall Street Journal said late Wednesday that the company received bids from two private-equity groups that were lower than it had hoped.

Sears Holding Corp. reported softer sales at its Kmart and Sears stores, causing a first-quarter loss of $1.58 per share, worse than analysts expected. The stock fell 2.6 percent.

Two stocks rose for every one that fell on the New York Stock Exchange. Consolidated volume came to 3.3 billion shares.

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