Immigration reform deal hangs on border security
| Immigration reform deal hangs on border security By: Carrie Budoff Brown and Seung Min Kim June 3, 2013 05:05 AM EDT Politico |
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| The Gang of Eight’s hopes for a Senate supermajority is running into the GOP’s push for a dramatic crackdown on border security — testing the limits of the bipartisan coalition that’s propelling the bill through Congress.
With Congress back this week to work on the measure, Senate negotiators want to pick up as many as two dozen Republican votes in a show of force that compels the House to act. But the result has to be much stricter than the current version of the bill to give it any hope of passing there either. They’ve got to do it without alienating the vast majority of Senate Democrats who like the bill as it is. And whatever happens, it has to keep Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) satisfied. Rubio, a key member of the Gang of Eight, is shopping around a proposal to have Congress — not the Department of Homeland Security — write the border control strategy that would be a prerequisite for most of the other elements of reform. Read more |
Immigration advocates ask Obama to suspend some deportations
By David Nakamura, Published: May 13, 2013 at 1:41 pm
Immigration advocates called on President Obama on Monday to suspend deportations of undocumented workers who would qualify for legal status under a comprehensive immigration bill being debate in the Senate.
With an estimated 1,100 illegal immigrants per day being deported from the United States, the advocates said Obama has a moral obligation to stop breaking up families when lawmakers are considering legislation that would allow most of the nation’s 11 million undocumented immigrants to apply for legal status. Read more
Stop The Checkpoints Rally on May 4th in Port Angeles!
Amid all the tragic news from Boston and from Texas, the Senate Gang of 8 did release their Immigration Reform Bill yesterday. And it contains much of what we expected – a long and torturous “path to citizenship” that only starts after massive increases in border enforcement, e-Verify, and increasing billions of dollars of our tax money going to corporations that manufacture military equipment and operate for-profit detention centers.
At this point there are a few good crumbs in the bill, but those most likely will be negotiated away by the Democrats and the White House to please Republicans and corporations in order to claim a bipartisan victory.
Huge increases in border enforcement diverts billions in tax money from the public good – education, public services, maintaining infrastructure, providing housing and transportation, and creating jobs through programs like the WPA and Civilian Conservation Corps. Further increases in security along the borders will be devastating to our communities. Read more
