Category: Immigration

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Domestic Policies Healthcare Immigration Immigration Reform News Politics

The Six Year Itch

From where I sit, last year was worse for the Republican Party and for progress than it ever was for President Obama. Yes, yes, I know what the conventional wisdom said about the president’s fifth year, but really, I don’t necessarily buy it. As a matter of fact, I think that when all is said and done by 2017, many people won’t even remember what the fuss was all about.

For example, the health care website was a dud in October and November, but as we speak, over 3 million people have signed up for health insurance through the portal and Medicaid, and the goal of signing up 7 million people by the end of March is eminently attainable. The Republican blahblahgosphere will say that not enough young, healthy people have signed up and that the death spiral will begin any time now, but since they’ve been wrong about everything related to the law (remember when the election of Scott Brown meant the end of the ACA?), why would we want to believe them now?

On immigration, the critics say that because there was no final bill last year that this was a failure for Obama. Not if we get a bill this year, and it’s looking more and more likely that we will. Not because it was a bad idea last year, but because the GOP has finally realized that they are national election toast of they don’t do something to help the Hispanic electorate that is running very quickly away from their party.

Likewise for the minimum wage, climate policy, appointees and foreign policy. In every one of these cases, the president won’t get Congress to sign on to his initiatives, but he’s laying the groundwork for later years or, most likely, for his successor who will most likely be a Democrat. At this point, Obama can do the most for this country by executive order and that’s what we’re likely to hear on Tuesday.

Most presidents, if they are remembered at all, are usually known for one or two major laws that transform the country. The ACA will be Obama’s main accomplishment, but I could see him also being remembered for the Consumer Protection Board and the president who saved the American automobile industry. Immigration would put him in the top ten lists of great ones. The right-wing knows this and that’s why their last-ditch efforts to derail anything Obama wants to do will be loud and scary. But that’s all they’ll be for years to come.

In the meantime, we are living through a trying time with a leader that history will remember fondly.

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Domestic Policies Healthcare Immigration Immigration Reform News Politics Teaparty

The Final Push

Far be it from me to argue with one of the greatest historical minds of the 20th century, but we essentially have an executive that serves a six year term, even if we get two extra bonus lame duck years for our efforts. So it has been with most other presidents, and so it probably shall be with Barack Obama. This is his sixth year; if it doesn’t happen this year, chances are that none of his high priority agenda items will become law in 2015 or 2016.

That’s why 2014 represents the final push for immigration, tax reform, a higher minimum wage, climate policy and every other item on the left-wing wish list. But this is not necessarily a bad thing. History has taught us that the first push rarely results in success when it comes to big change. Look how long it took to get healthcare reform. Sometimes the push is necessary if for no other reason than to get an idea in the public’s mind and to prepare them, or to follow their lead, when it comes to legislation.

Like marriage equality, which coalesced into a major civil rights issue in a short amount of time, the push for rights for all people goes as far back as Stonewall in 1969 and the Supreme Court’s ruling for and then reversal on, anti-sodomy laws in 1986 and 2003. Progressives have been highlighting income inequality and the rising gap between wealthy and not for decades. Now that cry is becoming a major force in calling for a higher, livable minimum wage that just could pass this year. After all, most people, even Republicans, support it.

The same will most likely be true of climate legislation, immigration, privacy and energy. More and more younger people realize that their world is changing and that the United States either has to catch up to other countries who are already addressing the problems or fall behind to our economic and social detriment. The far right is beginning to lose its grip on the Republican Party, and while I don’t see a more moderate wing surging anytime soon, I do see a less strident GOP in our future. That’s good news.

This year will see one or two major pieces of legislation, with the rest of Obama’s agenda left to the next Democratic president and a more willing population. I think we are moving in the right direction, but like anything done well, this will take time.

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Immigration Immigration Reform Politics

Republicans Have a Plan for Immigration: Deportation

Kevin McCarthy

House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) told immigration advocates that lawmakers will not take-up immigration reform this year. As a result, an amendment to deport DREAM-eligible immigrants — which passed with overwhelming GOP support in June — will be the only immigration measure to have received a vote on the floor of the House in 2013.

McCarthy’s remarks came after a week-long lobbying blitz from business groups, religious organizations, and immigration advocates. Proponents argued that comprehensive reform will provide a boost to the nation’s economy, create jobs for U.S. citizens and immigrants in the agriculture, retail trade, and construction sectors and bring millions of people out of the shadows.

But despite a series of constructive meetings with advocates, McCarthy explained to protesters camped outside of his district office in California that Congress did not have enough time to consider reform in the 16 remaining legislative days. The comments contradict reports of GOP leaders “struggling to come up with an agenda” to fill the end of the year with the House “facing no immediate cataclysmic deadlines.” Members come back from a week-long recess on Tuesday.

Last month, 186 Democrats introduced a comprehensive immigration reform bill that amends the measure passed by the Senate in June by “striking a controversial border security measure that would add 700 hundred of miles of fencing and 20,000 border control agents along the U.S.-Mexico border” and replacing it with a “border control plan that was passed unanimously by the House Homeland Security Committee last spring.” That proposal “instructs the Department of Homeland Security to write a plan that could ensure the apprehension of 90 percent of illegal border-crossers in high-traffic areas within two years and across the entire southern border within five years.”
Three Republicans — Reps. Jeff Denham (R-CA), Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), and Rep. David Valadao (R-CA) — have co-sponsored the comprehensive bill. House leadership, however, is wary of allowing a vote on a measure that does not have the support of the majority of the Republican caucus and worry that advancing any immigration proposal that triggers a conference with the Democratic-controlled Senate would deal a blow to the House in final negotiations and open House Republicans to conservative primary challengers.

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Immigration Immigration Reform Politics

John McCain on Fox News – “Fox News is a bit schizophrenic”

If Republican John McCain keeps this up, I’m going to have to write more good things about him.

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) was asked for his thoughts on the love/hate relationship that he has had with the personalities on Fox News Channel over the years. McCain told TNR’s Isaac Chotiner that he has never changed, but Fox’s opinion of him and the issues he tackles has shifted dramatically over the years. “I think that Fox News is a bit schizophrenic,” the Arizona senator opined.

“You have had conversations with people at Fox, The New Yorker reported, about immigration,” Chotiner asked, citing a report by Ryan Lizza which revealed that McCain had approached Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes asking him and his network to be more receptive to immigration reform proposals.

“There is a real divide in the party,” Chotiner continued. “What do Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch say about whether the party can come along on this issue?”

“It is well known that Rupert Murdoch is a strong supporter of immigration reform,” McCain replied. “Roger Ailes is also a realist. He believes that immigration reform is vital to the country first, but also the GOP. Yet he does not dictate. [Sean] Hannity has come out against it and kept his job. I don’t think Roger Ailes is ham-fisted.”

RELATED: John McCain Goes After Fellow GOPer On Senate Floor: He ‘Ought To Learn’ How Congress Operates

“But if you watch Fox, there are all these segments on immigrants and crime and so on, and people get riled up, and then they want reform,” the TNR reporter followed up. “It’s a difficult dynamic in the party.”

“I think that Fox News is a bit schizophrenic,” McCain shot back. “I saw a guy on “Hannity,” maybe “Huckabee,” and the guy said, “You know, the Chinese are coming across our border, and they are going to commit cyber-attacks.”

Chotiner expressed incredulity over the belief that one would have to cross a physical border to execute a cyber-attack. “Honest to God!” McCain assured him. “They are going to commit cyber-attacks.”

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Immigration Immigration Reform Politics

John McCain: Without Immigration Reform, “the Republican Party cannot win a national election”

Arizona Republican Senator John McCain is finding his Mavericky ways again. He has begun to buck his party’s wish to go against everything President Obama wants with the goal or hope that the president fails, and McCain is actually working with other Senate Democrats to get things done. So it’s no surprise hearing this Mavericky Senator warns his fellow Republicans, telling them that doing nothing on Immigration will seal the party’s fate as a loser in future national elections.

“I think this fall is very important,” McCain said at a forum hosted by AFL-CIO and the Economic Policy Institute. “It’s very important because we get into 2014 — the next election cycle. I think the issue really has ripened to the point that enough Americans are aware of it, we are either going to act or not act.”

On PBS Monday, McCain said that if immigration reform is not passed, the Republican Party will never again win a national election.

“Let’s say we enact it, comprehensive immigration reform — I don’t think it gains a single Hispanic voter, but what it does, it puts us on a playing field where we can compete for the Hispanic voter,” McCain told PBS’ Gwen Ifill. “If we don’t do that, frankly, I don’t see — I see further polarization of the Hispanic voter and the demographics are clear that the Republican Party cannot win a national election. That’s just a fact.”

McCain compared the current system to “de facto amnesty because they are not leaving” and said that in his experience and from polls he’s seen, most Americans support the pathway to citizenship as long as the undocumented pay a fine, learn English and get on the back of the line.

“It (immigration) has a broader spectrum of support than any I have ever seen in my political career,” he said. He said that the broad range of groups and communities that support immigration reform “can galvanize” in the coming months to make passage a reality.

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Immigration Immigration Reform Pat Buchanan Politics

Pat Buchanan Warns – Immigration Reform Will Break Up America

Pat Buchanan has said some… dumb and questionable things at times. His apparent hatred for other races has come out on many occasions. So hearing him say again that immigration reform would be the end of America, the collective response is oh, there goes Pat again. Like it’s expected. But at what point do we stop giving these hate mongers a mic?

Pat’s has been attributing immigration reform to America’s destruction for quite sometime now. Back in 2007, he lamented that the America where most immigrants came from European countries “is gone forever.” He questions why “third world countries” are now becoming a major source for new immigrants.

And keeping true to form, Buchanan continued his be-afraid-of-the-immigrant warning, saying that America will break up just like the Soviet Union did.

The Daily Caller posts a clip of Buchanan warning that if “you put 100 million Hispanic folks in the United States,” the southwest will become “as much a part of Mexico as it is of the United States.”

“If they have a different language, different culture, different faith, basically you get two peoples and two peoples eventually become two countries,” he said.

Buchanan went on to offer an alternate history of the United States, which he said became “one nation back around 1960, when all the immigrants who had come from eastern and southern Europe 1890-1920 had been assimilated and Americanized” through the Depression, World War II and television programming. “That brought us all together, and now we’re falling apart,” he said.

What you get is a growing disintegration of the country, a fragmentation into different parts. And we see this happening all over the world in the last few decades, where ethnic groups and linguistic minorities, ethnic minorities, cultural minorities, given the pressures of ethno-nationalism, are breaking up countries all over the world. It’s happening all over the Middle East; it happened in the Balkans, where Yugoslavia broke up into seven countries; the Soviet Union broke up into 15 countries.

You put 100 million Hispanic folks in the United States, and say 70 million of them on the southwest border, that becomes as much a part of Mexico as it is of the United States. If they have a different language, different culture, different faith, basically you get two peoples and two peoples eventually become two countries.

This is what I see as the future of America is the balkanization and disintegration of the country that had become one nation back around 1960, when all the immigrants who had come from eastern and southern Europe 1890-1920 had been assimilated and Americanized. We’d all gone through the Depression together, heard radio together, went through World War II together, and American television together. That brought us all together, and now we’re falling apart. – See more at: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/buchanan-immigration-reform-will-cause-us-break-soviet-union#sthash.RABfrSaR.dpuf

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Immigration Immigration Reform Politics

President’s Weekly Address: Fixing a Broken Immigration System

President Obama says that the United States Senate will soon take action to fix our broken immigration system with a commonsense bill. He also cautions that the new bill will not make everyone happy, not Democrats, not Republicans. But urges Congress to act quickly to pass the bill.

The bill before the Senate isn’t perfect.  It’s a compromise.  Nobody will get everything they want – not Democrats, not Republicans, not me.  But it is a bill that’s largely consistent with the principles I’ve repeatedly laid out for commonsense immigration reform.

This bill would continue to strengthen security at our borders, increase criminal penalties against smugglers and traffickers, and hold employers more accountable if they knowingly hire undocumented workers.  If enacted, it would represent the most ambitious enforcement plan in recent memory.

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Immigration Politics

Who You Callin’ A Republican?

Eric Cantor…

Realizing that they are collapsing under the weight of their own foolishness, the Republican Party has begun to sound more and more like “bleeding-heart liberals” than Conservatives. 

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor was on Meet the Press Sunday afternoon, rattling on about poor and unemployed “Joe Smoe”, who along with his family, suffers silently under this terrible economy. And there was the little girl he just met who has cancer but doesn’t have healthcare coverage to pay for her chemotherapy.

With his lower lip slightly trembling, Cantor wanted moderator David Gregory to know that the GOP is terribly concerned over the plight of all those little bitty immigrant children, who through no fault of their own are brought to this country illegally by their mean parents, and when caught, have to face the uncertainty of deportation and being separated from family and the only real home they’ve ever known…then in the exact same breath he claimed not to know what the Dream Act was…

…and Eric Cantor

More foolishness.

 

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Immigration Immigration Reform Politics

It’s Like Magic! Republicans Are Now For Immigration Reform – Eric Cantor Explains…

Eric Cantor and the leaders in the Republican party are on a massive outreach program, trying to get the votes of people they’ve actively tried to disenfranchised over the last few elections. Besides stealing a speech from President Obama where the President talked about different ways to help the middle class, Cantor went on television today and tried his best to convince Latinos that Republicans are for immigration, despite the fact that they unanimously voted against the last immigration bill called The Dream Act.

Representative Eric Cantor, the No. 2 Republican in the House of Representatives, said Congress could make quick progress on immigration if lawmakers agreed to give citizenship to children – an idea he opposed when it came up for a vote in 2010 as the DREAM Act.

“The best place to begin, I think, is with the children. Let’s go ahead and get that under our belt, put a win on the board,” Cantor said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Cantor is leading an effort to improve his party’s image as many Republicans worry they will be consigned to irrelevancy in coming years if they do not reach out to the fast-growing Latino electorate, which strongly supports immigration reform.

President Barack Obama has made immigration reform a top priority of his second term in office and a bipartisan group of senators is working to draft legislation that would tackle the issue in a comprehensive manner, rather than the piecemeal approach that Cantor suggested.

Republicans have successfully fooled their base for so long that they now think they can take one position today and change tomorrow. And no one will notice. But I think they’re in for a rude awakening come 2014.

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bill o reilly Immigration Politics

Colin Powell To Bill O’Reilly – “Why Are You Only Seeing Me As An African American?”

Retired General and former Secretary of State Colin Powell, went on the Fox News Network on Tuesday and was interviewed by Bill O’ Reilly. Powell, and outspoken Republican who voted for President Obama in 2008 and 2012, was asked by the host to defend his voting record for the Democratic president.

“What is it that you object to mostly, that caused you to vote for President Obama twice,” Reilly asked, to which Powell answered that the economic policies offered by the Republican candidates in 2008 and 2012, would not have fixed the economy. But that answer was not enough for Reilly and he ventured into trying to paint Colin’s votes for Obama, as based on race.

After pointing out that African-Americans are still suffering under President Obama, Reilly questioned Powell’s previous answer that the economy made him vote for President Obama. Powell seemed irritated by Reilly’s insertion of race into the conversation. “Why are you only seeing me as an African-American Bill?” Powell asked. “I’m an American.”

He then goes on to explain that although the economy is not where it needs to be, it is better now than it was before Obama took office. Powell also pointed out that when the general economy improves, as it’s doing now, then the economic outlook for other minority groups will improve as well.

The conversation progressed to immigration and voting, with Powell correctly stating that Republicans in the last election tried to “disenfranchise” minority by requiring voter ids and limiting voting days. “I want to see a Republican party that rather than try and make it more difficult to vote and restricting the days and hours you can vote,” Powell said, “a Republican party that says we want everybody to vote and we want you to vote for us.”

Powell and O’Reilly also spoke about Sarah Palin and other Republicans who turned him off during the previous campaigns.

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Immigration Politics

Republican Representative Calls Hispanics “Low Skilled”

At a time when Republicans are trying to get the Hispanic vote, this is not something they should be saying.

Rep. Lou Barletta (R-PA) thinks that Republicans should not take up immigration reform or even make an effort to compete for the votes of the fastest growing demographic in the country because he believes that Hispanics are “low-skilled” and dependent on social programs who will vote for Democrats because of it.

It’s about the worst possible messaging for the party still ringing from defeat at the polls in November, during an election which saw President Barack Obama trounce his Republican opponent by a 3-to-1 margin among Hispanics — but that didn’t stop Barletta from saying it.

“I hope politics is not at the root of why we’re rushing to pass a bill. Anyone who believes that they’re going to win over the Latino vote is grossly mistaken,” Barletta said, according to Pennsylvania newspaper The Morning Call. “The majority that are here illegally are low-skilled or may not even have a high school diploma. The Republican Party is not going to compete over who can give more social programs out. They will become Democrats because of the social programs they’ll depend on.”

The White House and a bipartisan group of Senators are outlining plans this week to reform the nation’s immigration system in a way that will permit the children of undocumented immigrants to stay in the country and become citizens, as well as provide a pathway to citizenship for individuals who broke the law to come to the U.S.

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Immigration Immigration Reform Politics

After Big Fiscal Cliff Win, Obama’s Next Battle – Immigration Reform

Despite a bruising fiscal cliff battle that managed to set the stage for an even more heated showdown that will likely take place in a matter of months, President Barack Obama is planning to move full steam ahead with the rest of his domestic policy agenda.

An Obama administration official said the president plans to push for immigration reform this January. The official, who spoke about legislative plans only on condition of anonymity, said that coming standoffs over deficit reduction are unlikely to drain momentum from other priorities. The White House plans to push forward quickly, not just on immigration reform but gun control laws as well.

The timeframe is likely to be cheered by Democrats and immigration reform advocates alike, who have privately expressed fears that Obama’s second term will be drowned out in seemingly unending showdowns between parties. The just-completed fiscal cliff deal is giving way to a two-month deadline to resolve delayed sequestration cuts, an expiring continuing resolution to fund the government and a debt ceiling that will soon be hit.

h/t Huffington Post

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