McCain stubbornly believes the House can pass immigration reform

Benjy Sarlin, @benjysarlin

4:46 PM on 08/27/2013

Senator John McCain isn’t ready to concede that House Republicans won’t pass real immigration reform. But he is watching the clock.

“It’s very important that we try to act before the end of this year,” McCain said at a town hall in Mesa, Arizona, on Tuesday. Waiting any longer will run into campaign season.  But given looming battles over funding the government and increasing the debt ceiling, passing immigration legislation before 2014 may be unrealistic.

“I remain guardedly optimistic that our friends in the House of Representatives will agree to their legislative process and then we can get to conference,” McCain, who was joined by fellow Arizona Republican Senator Jeff Flake, told the audience. He cited the array of interests backing reform, including major business groups, labor unions, and evangelical organizations, as evidence of its momentum.

House leaders are moving forward with a series of bills on border security and visa programs, but they’ve yet to decide how–and whether–to offer legal status and a path to citizenship to the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants living in America today. McCain is still hoping the House will support a citizenship component in a final deal.

 “I don’t accept your premise that the House of Representatives will absolutely reject a path to citizenship,” McCain told a reporter at the forum. “I think we’ll know more in two or three months.”

The Senate bill would require undocumented immigrants to meet a variety of requirements, including paying a fine and learning English, in order to obtain citizenship. The process would take at least 13 years for most eligible applicants. But among House Republicans, it’s not clear that the caucus supports even limited legal status for undocumented immigrants. Rep. Bob Goodlatte, chair of the House Judiciary Committee overseeing immigration legislation, recently suggested that even immigrants who were brought to the country illegally as children should not get a new path to citizenship.

Asked whether he might consider a deal that granted citizenship only to young undocumented immigrants, McCain didn’t dismiss the idea out of hand, but he said it would leave major policy holes.

“I think we’d have to cross that bridge when we come to it, but you’d still be faced over time by the same issue of 11 million people living in the shadows,” he said.

He added later: ”Ours is not engraved in concrete, but a path to citizenship would have to be a part of it.”

House Republicans have also complained that they fear President Obama will find ways to avoid enforcing security provisions of the bill, citing his administration’s recent decision to delay implementing the health care law’s employer mandate. McCain insisted that a combination of judicial and Congressional oversight would make it difficult to circumvent new enforcement requirements.

 “If you use that logic, [in] which people are saying ‘Well, don’t pass legislation because the president won’t enforce it,’ then let’s not pass any laws,” McCain said.

 Senator Marco Rubio, who co-sponsored the Senate immigration bill with McCain and Flake, has warned Republicans that Obama might unilaterally “legalize” the entire undocumented immigrant population via executive order if the House fails to pass a bill. Flake, for his part, didn’t think this was a realistic possibility.

“I think that would be very difficult to do,” he said. “I don’t think that could happen.

 

Top Five Reasons why Immigration Reform Is Likely to Pass This Year

Posted: 08/27/2013 7:02 am
 

By Robert Creamer

Political Organizer, Strategist, Author; Partner Democracy Partners

 

As lawmakers prepare to return to Washington after Labor Day, a few inside-the-Beltway pundits have blithely predicted that, "immigration reform is dead."

This, in the face of headlines that uniformly declare that the forces of reform - and Progressives of all sorts - have dominated the August town meeting circuit. And the vaunted anti-immigration reform backlash is nowhere to be found -- except perhaps in the imagination of Congressman Steve King.

In fact, there are many good reasons to predict that the odds are very good the GOP House Leadership will ultimately allow a vote on an immigration reform bill containing a pathway to citizenship this year. If such a bill is called, the odds are close to one hundred percent that it will pass.

That is because, right now, there are more than enough votes on the floor of the House to pass immigration reform with a pathway to citizenship if it is given an up or down vote. The only question now is whether the House Leadership decides that it is in their political interest to call the bill.

The GOP leadership understands that if an immigration reform bill passes, the Democrats will get the credit with key immigrant constituencies and many suburban swing voters. But they are also coming to realize that if they do not call the bill, they will get the blame with those same constituencies - and that could lead to both short-term and-long term disaster for the Republican Party.

Here are the top five reasons why immigration reform is likely to pass this year:

Reason #1: In order maintain control of the House, Republicans can afford to lose a maximum of seventeen seats in the mid-term elections. There are 44 districts currently held by Republicans where significant numbers of the voters (12% or more) are either Hispanics or Asian Americans. Of that number, as many as 20 may be seriously in play in 2014.

The mid-term elections are all about turnout. If Hispanic and Asian American voters are sufficiently enraged by Republican refusal to pass immigration reform, the GOP high command fears that they will register to vote and turn out in substantial numbers. That could easily tip the balance in terms of control of the House of Representatives.

And don't think that immigration reform is "just another issue" for Hispanics and Asian Americans. It doesn't matter whether you yourself would be personally impacted, a politician's position on whether they are for or against immigration reform has become symbolic for "are you on my side?" - "do you stand for or against my community?"

To get a sense of the intensity of feeling, all you need do is attend any of the literally hundreds of pro-immigration reform events and town meetings that have been held over the August break. People are fired up and ready to go.

The polling is equally clear. A poll taken of voters in key swing districts currently controlled by Republicans conducted by Public Policy Polling (PPP) in early July showed:

• Republican and Independent voters want Congress to pass a solution to our country's broken immigration system.
• Many are less likely to support Republicans if the House fails to pass immigration reform this summer.

 

According to a press release issued the by the polling firm:

Voters in CA-10 (Jeff Denham), CA-21 (David Valadao), CA-31 (Gary Miller), CO-6 (Mike Coffman), MN-2 (John Kline), NV-3 (Joe Heck), and NY-11 (Mike Grimm) all
say they would be less likely to vote for their Congressman next year if he opposes
immigration reform. Voters in those districts also say they will be inclined to punish the Republican Party more broadly if the House GOP does not allow immigration reform to move forward.

 

Reason #2: The Republican Leadership will be under enormous pressure from the Republican establishment - GOP donors, 2016 Presidential aspirants and other stakeholders - not to permanently damage the GOP brand with the exploding number of Hispanic and Asian American voters.

The November 2012 election results were a shocking wake-up call for the GOP establishment. Many actually expected to win. Up until election night they lived in denial of America's changing demographics. Now they are scrambling to "rebrand" the party with Hispanics, African Americans, Asian Americans, single women, and young people.

If the GOP refuses to call a vote on a pathway to citizenship in the House and is blamed for blocking immigration reform, that could alienate many of those constituencies - and especially Hispanics - for decades to come.

Texas is a case in point. Already Texas is a majority minority state. Even now, if Hispanics and African Americans registered and voted at the same rate as other voters, the GOP would find it difficult to count on the state's electoral votes in Presidential elections. But Texas' Hispanic population is growing. Even at current levels of voter participation, the GOP risks losing Texas if it becomes a permanent pariah Party among Hispanics.

Without Texas, it is almost impossible to put together a path to Republican Presidential victory at any time in the near future.

Reason #3: The more GOP leaders like Representative Steve King (R-IA-4) continue to make outrageous comments like the one about the "cantaloupe-sized calves" that immigrants get from "transporting hundreds of pounds of drugs" through the desert, the harder it is for the Republican Leadership in the House to resist pressure from the GOP establishment to call a vote on immigration reform.

The more that Congressman King - and his colleagues like Congressman Louie Gohmert (R-TX-1), or Congressman Don Young of Alaska (R-AK-AL) - who referred to Hispanics as "wetbacks" -- continue to spew anti-immigrant bigotry, the worse off they are not only with Hispanics and other immigrants - but with independent suburban women and young voters.

If independent suburban women and young voters are left with the view that the GOP is being led by - and defined by -- the Steve Kings of the world, many of them will desert the party in droves. They will react the same way independent voters reacted in Missouri and Indiana to the outrageous comments about women and rape by losing GOP Senate candidates Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock.

That would not only be a disaster for the GOP's Presidential hopes in 2016 - it would make it even more likely that the GOP will lose control of the House in 2014 since it makes it even harder for them to hang onto to Republican-held suburban seats in the Northeast and Midwest.

Reason #4: Increasing portions of the GOP base actively support comprehensive immigration reform.

It's not just the immigrant community and Progressives pressing the GOP leadership to call a vote on a pathway to citizenship. Many conservative voices have begun to actively campaign to pass immigration reform.

A large table of Evangelicals lead by national Evangelical leaders is working hard to persuade Republicans to vote yes - and call a vote in the House. They have spoken at Republican town meetings, taken out ads, and met privately with many GOP members.

Especially in the south, primary challenges are generally fueled by the Evangelical wing of the party. Evangelical support neutralizes the fears of many GOP representatives that a vote for immigration reform could subject them to a primary. That has weakened opposition to reform among Republicans who are more concerned about Primaries than General Elections.

Pro-immigration reform Evangelical activists have teamed up with leaders from the business community to support a pathway to citizenship. In GOP circles that is a powerful combination.

Business, Evangelical and law enforcement figures have done an increasingly effective job not only at making their case to the Leadership, but providing political cover to Republican House Members with few immigrants in their districts.

Reason #5: The polling shows that the biggest vulnerability for the GOP next year is the fact that persuadable voters increasingly believe that the Republicans in Congress are simply incapable of governing. Voters hate the gridlock and increasingly blame Republicans for obstruction. Increasingly, swing voters believe that the GOP is willing to sacrifice the good of the country for narrow partisan ideological reasons. In fact, voters have begun to think the GOP is just plain old incompetent.

If the Republican Leadership allows its extremist wing to block immigration reform even thought it passed the Senate on a strong bi-partisan vote, has majority support in the House, and the support of most Americans -- that will become Exhibit "A" in the case for throwing them out of power.

And if they manage to shut down the government - either in a futile attempt to "defund ObamaCare" or to prevent the government from paying its creditors (the debt ceiling) - and stop immigration reform - the case will be set in stone.

For their own good, the Republican Leadership simply can't allow that to happen.

I for one do not believe that the Republican Leadership will be so stupid - will so badly misplay its hand - that it will allow a tiny minority of extremists to fundamentally jeopardize the Party's near-term and long-term future.

Of course, stupider things have happened. But rest assured that if they do, the growing movement for immigration reform - not to mention the Democratic Party - will make the GOP pay the price.

Robert Creamer is a long-time political organizer and strategist, and author of the book: Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, available on Amazon.com. He is a partner in Democracy Partners and a Senior Strategist for Americans United for Change. Follow him on Twitter @rbcreamer.

See the entire article at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-creamer/top-five-reasons-why-immi_b_3821635.html?utm_source=AILA+Mailing&utm_campaign=f725796c72-AILA8_8_28_13&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_3c0e619096-f725796c72-287725961

Obama adds to list of illegal immigrants not to deport: Parents

By Stephen Dinan

 

The Washington Times

Friday, August 23, 2013

The Obama administration issued a policy late last week telling immigration agents to try not to arrest and deport illegal immigrant parents of minor children — a move that adds to the categories of people the administration is trying not to deport.

In a nine-page memo issued Friday, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said agents should use “prosecutorial discretion” to try to avoid detaining parents and, if parents are detained, agents should make sure they have the ability to visit with their children or participate in family court proceedings.

The move won praise from immigrant rights groups who said it’s a step toward a kinder detention policy. But a top Republican blasted the memo as another effort by the Obama administration to circumvent the law.

“President Obama has once again abused his authority and unilaterally refused to enforce our current immigration laws by directing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to stop removing broad categories of unlawful immigrants,” said House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, Virginia Republican.

Mr. Goodlatte, whose committee is in charge of many of the immigration bills the House could consider this year and who is working on a legalization bill for young illegal immigrants, said the Obama administration’s move “poisons the debate” and shows that the president is trying to “politicize the issue” rather than work for a compromise bill.

It’s not clear how many illegal immigrants could be aided by the latest guidance, nor how many parents already in the deportation pipeline could be released or transferred.

However, some cases already bubbling up could be affected. Earlier this month, immigrant rights groups protested and managed to win a one-year stay of deportation for an illegal immigrant in Ohio who is the chief provider for his family, including a child with cerebral palsy.

The memo is the latest in a series of directives issued by ICE and by Homeland Security Secretary Janet A. Napolitano that try to lay out priorities for whom the government will detain and try to deport.

Ms. Napolitano says her department is funded to deport about 400,000 immigrants a year out of an estimated population of 11 million. She said it makes sense to focus those deportation efforts on immigrants with serious criminal records or who have violated immigration laws repeatedly.

A year ago, she issued a policy granting tentative legal status to young illegal immigrants brought to the country as children, who call themselves Dreamers. That policy began accepting applications in August 2012 and as of the end of this July had approved legal status for more than 430,000 illegal immigrants.

ICE agents and officers sued to try to block the policies, but a federal judge in Texas last month turned down their case. The judge said they were probably correct in arguing that the law requires them to arrest illegal immigrants, but he said he didn’t have jurisdiction because it was a matter for collective bargaining, not for the courts.

Even as the memos draw criticism from some, immigrant rights groups are mounting a campaign asking Mr. Obama to expand his use of prosecutorial discretion to halt almost all deportations.

If Congress fails to pass a bill legalizing illegal immigrants this year, pressure on Mr. Obama will intensify further.

The memo issued last week instructs ICE agents to give special consideration when they encounter an illegal immigrant who is a parent or legal guardian of a child.

“FODs shall continue to weigh whether an exercise of prosecutorial discretion may be warranted for a given alien and shall consider all relevant factors in this determination, including whether the alien is a parent or legal guardian of a USC or LPR minor, or is a primary caretaker of a minor,” said the new memo, known as the Family Interest Directive. FODs are field operations directors, LPRs are legal permanent residents and USCs are U.S. citizens.

Bruce Lesley, president of the First Focus Campaign for Children, said the only long-term solution is for Congress to pass a bill but the new policy helps in the meantime.

“The Family Interest Directive is a major victory for children, reducing the likelihood that immigration enforcement will tear families apart and reducing the harm to kids when separation is unavoidable,” he said in a statement.

Read more: http://p.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/aug/23/new-obama-policy-warns-agents-not-detain-illegal-i/?page=2#ixzz2d64CEf00

Immigration Reformers Are Winning August

Molly Ball

Aug 21 2013, 6:00 AM ET

Activists lead a march in favor of immigration reform in Sacramento, California, last week. (Rich Pedroncelli/Associated Press)

Activists opposed to immigration reform were all set to spend this month putting pressure on lawmakers to kill the legislation. But it hasn't exactly been a show of force.

Last week, the Tea Party Patriots and NumbersUSA, two groups opposed to "amnesty" legislation, heavily publicized a rally in Richmond, Virginia, featuring Steve King, the firebrand Republican congressman who recently claimed most undocumented youth are physically fit drug mules. But only a few dozen people showed up -- far short of the hundreds organizers had planned for.

Journalists posted photos of a lonely-looking King under a gazebo in a mostly empty public park. A reporter for Breitbart News, Matthew Boyle, tweeted, "If grassroots wants to kill #Amnesty they have to show up. #teaparty they are not here in Richmond."

Activists on both sides of the immigration debate had put heavy emphasis on the importance of flexing grassroots muscle during this month of congressional recess. The idea is to show Republicans in the House of Representatives, which hasn't settled on a path forward on the issue, where the most passionate support lies. And as August winds down, the Richmond event seems indicative of the overall trend. Hundreds of immigrant advocates have appeared at rallies and town halls across the country. But the other side, the opponents, have been mostly absent.

Hundreds of reform advocates recently rallied at the Bakersfield, California, office of Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the House GOP whip. (A local television station put the number at "more than 1,000"; Breitbart reported it was about 400, mostly "Mexican in origin," and noted the presence of "about two dozen counter-demonstrators.") More than 500 pro-reform activists, including the mayor of Springfield, Ohio, and local clergy, showed up at Speaker John Boehner's district office. The Washington Times counted about 60 pro-reform activists calling on Rep. Frank Wolf in Herndon, Virginia. They marched through the streets of Asheboro, North Carolina, and gathered alongside the Catholic diocese in Salt Lake City. In Corpus Christi, Texas, a Republican congressman, Blake Farenthold, took to Twitter to beseech opponents to show up and counter the 10,000 pro-reform petitions that activists delivered to his office.

Anti-immigration-reform groups were hard pressed to come up with evidence of similar grassroots fervor for their side. Indeed, many of the examples they cited seemed to show the opposite. A NumbersUSA organizer passed along footage from a town hall where Kansas Rep. Lynn Jenkins was asked repeatedly about immigration; all the questioners in the clip are pro-reform, but booing rumbles through the crowd as they speak. At a town hall for Rep. Karen Bass, the California Democrat is asked about an unrelated piece of legislation that would deport "illegal alien gang members" (and explains why she opposes it). In Elkhorn, Nebraska, Republican Lee Terry is asked, "Will we see a path to citizenship in the immigration bill?" as DREAM Act activists are shown in a local television report.

Anti-immigration-reform groups appear to be canceling events for lack of participation. Rallies have disappeared from the Tea Party Patriots' online calendar.

Anti-reform groups appear to be canceling events for lack of participation. The Tea Party Patriots once boasted of summer rallies in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Dallas; and South Carolina, but they've disappeared from the calendar on the group's website. Another anti-immigration-reform group, the Black American Leadership Alliance, had planned a nine-city "We Are America Tour," but had to drop half the stops. "Dear friends, it is with deep regret that I must inform you all that we had to drop several rallies," an organizer wrote on Facebook, in a post that has since been removed but was spotted and preserved by the pro-reform group America's Voice. "We were unable to get organizers for the following: Miami, FL., Chicago, IL., Roanoke, VA., and Wisconsin. The Ohio rally is still going to happen, but not under the "Tour" title. FAIR is leading that rally. That leaves us with 4 rallies. Phoenix, AZ. Richmond, VA. And rallies in Houston, and Dallas, TX. Even the rallies in Houston, and Richmond, VA, are not completely confirmed at this time."

FAIR stands for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a Washington-based group that opposes legal and illegal immigration. In a Washington Post article last week, the group's communications director acknowledged being outgunned by activists for the other side. "It's a staggering, well-financed hard push by the left and the right," Bob Dane told the Post.

A Black American Leadership Alliance representative was unavailable for comment. The Tea Party Patriots' national coordinator, Jenny Beth Martin, told me the disappearing rallies were not "set in stone," so their listings were removed until they could be finalized. Martin also told ABC News that Tea Party activists are more focused on the push to defund Obamacare than on defeating immigration reform. Roy Beck, the executive director of NumbersUSA, which claims to be the largest grassroots group against citizenship for undocumented immigrants, previously told me his group was gearing up for a major August mobilization, but in an interview Monday he denied that was ever the goal. "We did not try to organize anything massive," he said.

NumbersUSA has alerted its members to 181 past events, with 70 more scheduled for this week and 142 still to come, involving more than 100 Republican members of Congress. Members have reported back to the group that they felt they were in the majority at 90 percent of the events, Beck told me, based on the way the audience rumbled and booed.

As for the poorly attended Richmond rally, Beck acknowledged it was disappointing, but blamed the lack of turnout on a bad location choice. "We picked a spot that, it turns out, has the highest homicide rate in the city, and apparently a lot of people were afraid to come," he said. Beck seemed to associate this danger with the African-American population: "We wanted to be there at a place where we could talk about the huge population of descendants of slavery who have never yet been part of the American Dream," he said. "But sometimes passion and principles get in the way of practicality."

"Our job is to hold people where they are. We're just feeling that the line has been held."

Beck admitted that his side is not as galvanized as activists were in May of 2007, when an outpouring of grassroots anger -- directed by NumbersUSA -- helped derail the last immigration-reform push. But that's because reform has less chance of passing this time, so activists are less concerned, he said. "This year, it's very much like there's a wildfire out there coming for your town, but everybody knows there's a reservoir between the fire and your town, and that's the House of Representatives," he said. "Everybody has been told by the media the bill is dead on arrival in the House."

In any case, Beck said, all the rallies in the world won't do reform advocates any good if Republican members of Congress aren't taking positions in favor of reform, and that's not happening in a major way. McCarthy said he was for a piecemeal approach, with border security coming first. Tennessee Rep. Scott DesJarlais, confronted by an 11-year-old girl whose father faces deportation, told her it was brave of her to speak, but "we have laws, and we need to follow those laws," to applause from the audience. Virginia Rep. Bob Goodlatte, who as chairman of the Judiciary Committee is something of a gatekeeper for immigration policy, reiterated that he does not believe the undocumented should get a "special pathway to citizenship" not available to would-be legal immigrants.

"August is so much more important to the pro-[comprehensive immigration reform] side than to us," Beck said. "They really had to change a lot of minds. Our job is to hold people where they are .... We're just feeling that the line has been held."

Advocates of immigration reform say Beck is moving the goalposts. They count 23 Republican members of Congress who have come out in support of a path to citizenship, including many for the first time this month.

"I knew we were going to do really well [mobilizing people]; I just didn't think the other side wouldn't show up," said Frank Sharry, the longtime immigration-reform advocate who heads America's Voice. "In 2007, they were formidable. You could argue they kicked our ass. They generated a huge volume of opposition to the bill, and it was a big factor in our defeat."

To Sharry, the rapidly forming takeaway from this August's political-organizing battle is that opponents of immigration reform are a paper tiger.

Before the recess, "there was a sense that immigration reform was going to be a hot topic, and Republicans would come back telling leadership we want no part of it," Sharry said. "If anything, you have more and more members saying, 'We've got to do this.' That's a surprising and welcome development."

Sharry agreed with Beck that attendance at town halls is not the same as votes in Congress. But, he said, "I think it shows that at this point, the forces for reform -- left, right, and center -- are much stronger than the forces opposing reform. I think we're more likely to come into September with momentum than they are, and that's not what many would have predicted just a few short weeks ago."

You can view the entire story at: http://m.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/08/immigration-reformers-are-winning-august/278873/