Tag Archives: immigration reform

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POTUS plans immigration push

As one who generally endorses the notion of presidential prerogative, I welcome the news that Barack Obama is going to use the power of his office to move immigration reform forward — with our without congressional buy-in.

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/210995-obama-pledges-to-take-executive-actions-on-immigration

Obama is steamed that Congress won’t vote this year on a comprehensive immigration reform bill. It seems to matter little that most members of Congress — including Republicans — want reform legislation enacted. House Speaker John Boehner says it won’t happen because, he says, lawmakers and “the American people” don’t trust the president to enforce immigration laws.

Obama’s response: “If Congress will not do its job, at least we can do ours.”

He hasn’t yet specified how he’ll act. He plans on the Fourth of July to naturalize several U.S. military men and women who aren’t yet citizens.

“I don’t prefer taking administrative action,” Obama said in a Rose Garden event, standing beside Vice President Biden. “I’ve made that clear multiple times. … I only take executive action when we have a serious problem, a serious issue, and Congress chooses to do nothing.”

Congress already is angry over what it says is the president’s “excessive” use of executive authority. That’s a phony argument on its face, given that Barack Obama has issued fewer such orders than any president of the past 100 years.

The president has asked for more money to secure our borders in the wake of the Central America immigration crisis that has stranded thousands of illegal immigrants — mostly children and young adults — on our southern border. Boehner’s response to date? He’s just content to dig in his heels even more.

The Constitution and federal law give the president wide latitude on taking action. As the president has noted, Congress should lead, follow or get out of the way.

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Border crisis expands

Linda Chavez asks in a New York Post column why the Obama administration doesn’t “do more” to stem the flow of children from Central America into southern border states such as Texas, New Mexico and Arizona.

http://nypost.com/2014/06/20/behind-the-horrible-border-crisis/

I kind of expect that from Chavez, a noted conservative thinker and pundit.

I’ve been wracking my brain the past few days with this question: Why doesn’t Mexico do more to stop the flow of these unaccompanied children all the way through that country and into the United States of America?

Chavez and others have noted that the kids have to travel about 1,300 miles through Mexico to reach the southern border of the United States. How is it that those children are given free passage through a fairly large country to end up in the Land of Opportunity?

If President Obama has a bone to pick, it ought to be with the Mexican government.

Chavez lays out a grim scenario: “According to recent reports, these kids walk right up to border agents as soon as they see them and turn themselves in. They’ve been instructed to do so, sometimes by the criminal ‘coyotes’ who extort hundreds, even thousands, of dollars from the kids’ parents to get them across the border.

“These human traffickers are telling parents their children will be granted a legal right to stay in the U.S. once on our soil. This is absolutely false — but that word is slow in getting to gullible would-be border crossers.”

She wants the U.S. government to blanket Guatemala and Honduras TV airwaves to public service announcements urging parents to stop selling their children to traffickers. That’s fine.

However, geopolitical neighborliness compels one country to do all it can do to protect its orders with another nation.

Critics keep harping on the openness of the U.S. side of our border with Mexico. They forget — or ignore — the fact that we’ve deported record numbers of illegal immigrants in recent years. The problem just has been compounded many times by the flood of these children from beyond Mexico’s southern border.

Whose fault is that? Ours? I don’t think so.

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Boehner showing other side

I’m beginning to think more kindly of U.S. House Speaker John Boehner.

The Ohio Republican has taken to criticizing members of his own party, particularly the more stubborn among them who refuse to move legislation forward for a number of reasons that might have little to do with the merits of whatever they’re considering.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/04/raul-labrador-john-boehner-immigration-106033.html?ml=po_r

Boehner recently mocked House Republicans for refusing to vote on immigration reform. He did so in a kind of a playful way, which reportedly did sit well with many GOP lawmakers.

Raul Labrador, R-Idaho, was one of them not amused by the speaker’s tone. “I was disappointed with Speaker Boehner’s comments, and I think they will make it harder – not easier – to pass immigration reform,” Labrador said. “The vast majority of House Republicans are pro-immigration reform, and we have been working hard to achieve it.”

Boehner’s remarks were couched in a kind of silly tone in which he said of GOP members of Congress, “Ohhhh, this is too hard.”

Boehner, as near as I can tell, is one of those dreaded “establishment Republicans” who thinks government actually can do some good for Americans. He wants to move immigration reform forward but he’s been fighting tooth and nail with the tea party wing of his House caucus who just won’t budge. Some chatter in Washington is suggesting that Boehner may be growing so weary of the constant intra-party battle that he might surrender the speakership at the end of the year. Others say he’s committed to leading the House if members will allow it.

Whatever happens, the speaker is showing another — and I believe more likable — side of himself in this ongoing fight with the tea party wing of Congress.

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Stopping illegal flow is a pipe dream

Texas lieutenant governor candidate Dan Patrick lives in a dream world.

He’s dreaming of a day when Texas can stop illegal immigrants from streaming across our southern border. As it is noted in the link attached here, that is an impossible goal. It can’t be met, short of erecting a wall along the entire length of that border and positioning armed guards every 500 yards.

http://www.texasmonthly.com/burka-blog/castro-v-patrick

Patrick is running in the Republican runoff against Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst for the job Dewhurst has held since 2003.

He recently debated the issue of immigration with San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro. The two men shook hands afterward and parted on friendly terms. However, Castro is right and Patrick is wrong on the best way to handle the issue of illegal immigration.

We cannot seal off our border; it’s too expensive and too difficult to maintain. We cannot deport every illegal immigrant who’s come to this country in search of a better life.

We must enact immigration reform that gives those who are here illegally some path toward citizenship if they want it. If they don’t, well, we can show them the door out of here.

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Phone call symbolizes enmity

A simple phone call, that’s all it was supposed to be.

But now, as Politico.com has noted, the two principals in that conversation cannot even agree on its nature.

President Obama blistered congressional Republicans over their refusal to enact comprehensive immigration reform; then he telephoned House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va. Did the two men talk about immigration reform or did they, as the White House said, exchange pleasantries as the president wished Cantor, who is Jewish, a happy Passover?

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/04/immigration-barack-obama-eric-cantor-105764.html?hp=f2

Cantor responded to Obama’s attack with one of his own.

To be honest, I’m wishing a plague on both sides of this matter.

I’m also believing Cantor is right that the president and his team still haven’t learned how to work with the very people they need to enact their agenda, namely the members of Congress who happen to be from the other party.

It’s fair, however, to wonder whether the president simply has run out of patience with the loyal opposition.

The testy exchange went like this, according to Politico.com:

“The president called me hours after he issued a partisan statement which attacked me and my fellow House Republicans and which indicated no sincere desire to work together,” Cantor said in a statement. “After five years, President Obama still has not learned how to effectively work with Congress to get things done. You do not attack the very people you hope to engage in a serious dialogue,” he continued.

The president had said this earlier:

“Unfortunately, Republicans in the House of Representatives have repeatedly failed to take action, seemingly preferring the status quo of a broken immigration system over meaningful reform. Instead of advancing common-sense reform and working to fix our immigration system, House Republicans have voted in favor of extreme measures like a punitive amendment to strip protections from ‘Dreamers.'”

Both sides keep talking past each other, even as they insist it’s time to start working together.

There isn’t a Lyndon Johnson or Everett Dirksen among any of them.

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Rand Paul makes sense on outreach

Listen up, tea party wing of the Republican Party.

One of your own is making sense on ways your party can reach out more effectively to a growing minority of voters in the United States.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/04/rand-paul-gop-must-get-beyond-deportation-105241.html

U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., a possible candidate for president in 2016, says the GOP must get “beyond deportation” if it hopes to attract Latino voters.

Think about that. So many leading Republicans were saying during the 2012 presidential campaign that deportation — or “self-deportation,” as Mitt Romney called it — was one way to rid the country of illegal immigrants.

“The bottom line is, the Hispanic community, the Latino community is not going to hear us until we get beyond that issue,” Paul said this week.

Who wants to wager whether the Republican Party is going to heed this sound advice? I’m not yet willing to believe the tea party wing of the GOP — the minority within the party with the loudest voice — is going to take the bait.

I do admire Paul, though, for telling the harsh truth to his GOP tea party brethren. Indeed, another key member of that wing of the party — Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas — is an immigrant himself. The Texas Cruz Missile, though, keeps talking tough on immigration, brushing off efforts to reform the system in a comprehensive, constructive way.

Keep driving home the message, Sen. Paul. Maybe one day they’ll get it. Then again, maybe they won’t.

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Immigration reform is essential

Vice President Joe Biden is mostly right when he declares that undocumented immigrants “are Americans already.”

He told the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce that all they want to is to become integrated fully in American society. That’s why he supports immigration reform.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/201972-biden-illegal-immigrants-already-americans

I, too, want immigration reform.

I want it especially for a specific category of illegal immigrants: those who were brought to this country when they were children by parents who sneaked in under the radar — and who have grown up, come of age and established their lives as full-blown Americans.

Those are the innocent victims in this debate over how and whether to enact serious reform of our immigration policies.

The effort contains a lot of provisions. One of them is an idea supported, believe it or not, by the likes of Republicans George W. Bush and Rick Perry, two Texas governors who know up close how difficult it is for these quasi-Americans to live in the shadows.

Perry has been criticized unfairly by the tea party/nut-job wing of his party for recognizing that immigrants who are technically hear illegally have assimilated into American culture and deserve to live as Americans openly.

I remain hopeful that Congress eventually will do right by those who want to become Americans by giving them the so-called “pathway to citizenship” contained in the immigration overhaul that is awaiting full congressional approval.

Do I predict it will happen? Not on your life. Eternal optimist that I am, my hope does spring eternal.

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Chairman Ryan must avoid code words

When you mention people who live in what’s called the “inner city,” you’re generally referring to Americans of African descent.

That’s a given in today’s political culture.

And when you suggest that the “inner city culture” doesn’t honor work, you’re insulting a whole race of Americans.

That’s what U.S. House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan was told after he made some, um, intemperate remarks on talk-show host Bill Bennett’s radio show.

http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/first-read/paul-ryan-confronted-over-inner-cities-remark-tense-exchange-n57636

And one of Ryan’s Wisconsin constituents called him out on it at a town hall meeting this week in Janesville, Wisc.

Ryan said on Bennett’s show that there is a “tailspin of culture, in our inner cities in particular, of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning to value the culture of work.”

An African-American man, Alfonso Gardner, challenged Ryan for that remark, saying he was using code words to describe black citizens. Ryan’s response? “There was nothing whatsoever about race in my comments at all, it had nothing to do with race.”

Actually, Mr. Chairman, it had everything to do with race, even if you didn’t say it overtly.

That’s the point Gardner is making and it is something the possible 2016 Republican presidential candidate may need to clear up if he jumps into the next national presidential campaign.

Ryan already has more or less apologized for using what he described as “inarticulate” verbiage when talking to Bennett. Indeed, as the link attached here notes, Ryan has become an advocate for immigration reform while many of his GOP House colleagues have balked at the notion. He told the town hall crowd he is entirely sensitive to the plight of minorities.

Code words can be perceived as hurtful if they’re put in the kind of context Ryan was addressing in his radio interview. One of the young congressman’s constituents construed it that way. It doesn’t matter what he intended to say or meant to imply.

Words have consequences, Rep. Ryan.

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GOP differs on immigration? Imagine that

This is about the least-surprising political news of the week: Congressional Republicans meeting this week at an annual retreat are displaying sharp differences over how, or even whether, to move ahead with immigration reform.

Here’s a word to the wise: Do it for the sake of your party’s survival, if not for the sake of millions of de facto Americans who have been living in the shadows, many of them since they were children brought here illegally by their parents.

http://thehill.com/homenews/house/197076-house-gop-split-over-forging-ahead-on-immigration-this-year

House Speaker John Boehner is beginning to make sense these days and is pushing back against the hard-line tea party wing of his GOP House caucus. He wants to reform the nation’s immigration policies, which already have been approved in the Senate, but have been stalled in the GOP-controlled House of Representatives.

Others within his caucus want to move immigration forward as well, but as usual they’re being stymied by the radical right wing that believes giving a “pathway to citizenship” for undocumented immigrants is tantamount to granting amnesty to lawbreakers.

These clowns ought to listen to the likes of border state governors, such as, say, Republican Rick Perry of Texas. He’s as conservative as most of the tea party wing in the House, but he understands better than they do that those who are brought here as children, have grown as Americans and know the United States as their country deserve a chance to work their way toward citizenship.

I’m hoping the speaker will continue to push back against the wacko wing of his House caucus. Immigration reform is a must for the nation. Whether it helps the Republicans is of little concern to me. I just want to bring 11 million American residents out of the shadows.

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For GOP, immigration reform a necessity

Congressional Republicans are facing a stark reality in the face.

If they fail to approve immigration reform — and soon — they’re going to be cast farther into the political wilderness by those who would benefit most by such improvements in U.S. immigration policy.

http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/195764-obama-to-democrats-boehner-will-pass-immigration-reform-in-2014

The GOP already is in serious trouble with immigrants and with those who are the direct descendants of recent immigrants to the United States, as the 2012 presidential election proved without a doubt.

GOP nominee Mitt Romney fared poorly among Latino voters, winning about one in four votes, enabling President Obama to win an unexpectedly comfortable re-election victory.

Republicans who control the House of Representatives have been reluctant to act on immigration reform, such as enabling those who came to this country illegally as children a path to citizenship. They’re going to pay a big price down the road if they don’t do the right thing by giving those folks a chance to come out of the shadows.

House Speaker John Boehner, who I believe is a reasonable man caught in the vise grip of a wing of his party, is beginning to send out signals that immigration reform could occur this year. Barack Obama thinks it will happen, as he told congressional Democrats.

Given that the GOP has declared its intention to reach out, such reform is becoming a necessity.

It’ll be good for a beleaguered political party. What’s more, it will be good for the country.