The only reason I can think of for the speech was precisely to get the Gang of Eight senators to release their framework, as they’ve already done. In other words, as the L.A. Times pointed out the other day, the White House knows that any amnesty bill seen as coming from Obama will be poison to Republicans. But the senatorial cabal hadn’t come to an agreement yet, so I suspect Schumer called the White House and asked if they could please schedule a speech for Obama on immigration, then leak that, so he could tell his Republican co-conspirators that they had to hurry and beat Obama so they didn’t look like they were playing catch-up. So, having announced there was going to be a speech, the Obama administration had to follow through, but they had nothing new to say so they just hit F11 on their keyboard for the stock amnesty speech.