Congress

WASHINGTON—House Republican leaders are preparing to release a set of principles to guide a House immigration overhaul, including legal status for many of the 11 million people in the U.S. illegally, people familiar with the planning said.

This would represent the first time that the House GOP leadership has explicitly endorsed allowing illegal immigrants to remain and work in the U.S....

The one-page document is being developed by House Speaker John Boehner's office in conjunction with the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and others in the Republican House leadership. It contains few details but voices support for the major planks of the comprehensive bill that cleared the Senate last summer. That includes increased border security, stepped-up employment verification, a temporary worker program for low-skilled workers, more visas for high-technology workers and a path to citizenship for people brought to the U.S. illegally as children, according to two people who have seen a draft....

The document also expresses support for legal status for undocumented immigrants and envisions some sort of legal process by which they admit guilt and pay fines and any back taxes owed. It will also insist that no legalization provisions take effect until border security and other enforcement measures are in place, people familiar with the draft said.

Immigration advocates have pressed for citizenship, not just legalization, for those undocumented residents, saying that anything less would sentence them to permanent second-class status. Legislation that cleared the Senate last summer provides for a 13-year path to citizenship for those who meet qualifications.

Legislation is being developed by House Republicans that wouldn't exclude citizenship for those here illegally. But it rejects what many Republicans see as a "special path" not available to would-be immigrants who didn't break the law. Rather, after people win legal status they could apply for green cards, the same as any other legal immigrant.

Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R., Va.) has voiced support for such an approach for months. He signaled openness to legalization again in an interview that aired on Telemundo on Sunday....

The emerging GOP approach was welcomed by some immigration advocates, who have grown frustrated waiting for the House to act. Frank Sharry, who leads the influential advocacy group America's Voice, pointed out that it wasn't long ago when GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney proposed that the U.S. make life so miserable for illegal immigrants that they voluntarily "self-deport."...

It wasn't even clear when the House would hold its first immigration votes. Some have pointed to a window this spring, after the bulk of Republican primaries are over. Others have said it makes more sense to move more quickly. Read more about GOP Leaders Set to Embrace Legal Status for Immigrants

Most folks are familiar with the initials “DUI,” they stand for “Driving Under the Influence.”

Today, because of campaign contributions and incredible pressures brought to bear by special interest groups against individual candidates as well as their political parties, many politicians are forced to govern under the influence of the money and pressures that are applied to force these supposed representatives of their constituents to betray those who voted for them to satisfy those who wield the power.

One of those who wield a huge amount of power is the CEO of the Chamber of Commerce, Tom Donohue. On January 7, 2014 Donohue was interviewed on the Fox News program, Special Report, hosted by Bret Baeir.

Towards the beginning of his interview Donohue noted, “There are 21 million people who are either out of work or working part time and want to work full time, or they’ve stopped looking.”

Clearly Donohue understands that there is a serious shortage of jobs but when, towards the end of the interview Baier asked him about immigration reform Donohue seemingly either forgot what he said minutes earlier or perhaps suffered from a lack of “mouth / ear coordination” and was unable to hear the words that came out of his own mouth, because he said that there was a need for more foreign workers for seasonal agricultural jobs and for workers at the “Top end.” Presumably a reference to high-tech workers. It is astonishing that on the one hand Donohue complains that there are not enough jobs and then, when addressing immigration he suddenly did a 180 degree turn and claimed that “demographics are destiny” and that there are not enough workers!

When Baier asked Donohue about candidates that the Chamber of Commerce would support in the upcoming elections and how immigration would figure into the equation, Donohue stated that although the Chamber would support candidates that supported their positions on 70% of the issues, the Chamber of Commerce would make certain that none of their associates would attack any candidate irrespective of the positions they might take on other issues, provided that they supported Comprehensive Immigration Reform.

That statement almost sounded like Tony Soprano offering “protection.”

On March 26, 2013 CNBC posted an insightful report, the title of which paints a clear picture:   "Our Massively One-Sided Immigration Debate"

This news report was predicated on an extensive investigative report published a day earlier, on March 25, 2013 by an organization known as the Sunlight Foundation.

Here is an important excerpt from the CNBC report:  As it turns out, while Americans remain divided on immigration, the lobbyists are not.

The Sunlight Foundation, a do-gooder government transparency and accountability outfit formed in 2006, on Monday released "Untangling the Webs of immigration Lobbying," a report examining the organizations that have led the charge for changing the rules on immigration to the United States.

Sunlight dug through 8,000 lobbying reports filed since the last big push for immigration reform in 2007. Six-thousand seven-hundred and twelve of those involved immigration lobbying. More than $1.5 billion was spent on this immense lobbying push.

On January 2, 2014 the Global Post published a report written by Jake Tapper, CNN's Chief Washington Correspondent and news anchor. He was previously employed as a journalist by ABC News. He reported that in 2011, astoundingly, approximately one in three high-tech jobs went to foreign workers in the United States. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate for American high-tech workers was pegged at 14.7%.

The title and subtitle of his report summed up his findings succinctly:

"The Indian tech worker H-1B visa scam

More than 1 in 3 US tech jobs go to foreigners. Americans, and many foreigners, get cheated in the process. Obama and Zuckerberg want to let in more.”

As Congress debates whether or not to extend unemployment benefits and talking heads on television news programs complain bitterly about Americans who are on disability, no one is willing to make the most obvious connection between increased levels of immigration and increasing problems Americans are having in finding jobs.

Not unlike impaired motorists, politicians determined to keep their jobs at any cost, are driving this country off the cliff by promising amnesty for unknown millions of illegal aliens, incentivizing still more illegal immigration and working to enable even more authorized foreign workers to compete unfairly with American workers. If not stopped, these politicians, who have succumbed to the influence of the lobbyists with huge bankrolls and party leaders, suffer from impaired judgement. They have placed America and Americans on the “Road to Ruin.”

By:  Michael W. Cutler, Senior Special Agent, INS (Retired) - Senior Fellow, Californians for Population Stabilization

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi privately has urged the Obama administration to halt deportations for some illegal immigrants...

In an interview with Telemundo over the weekend, Mrs. Pelosi said that just being in the country illegally is not enough of a reason to be deported, and she said illegal immigrants must have something more serious on their records.

“Our view of the law is that it — if somebody is here without sufficient documentation, that is not reason for deportation,” she said in the interview... “If somebody has broken the law, committed a felony or something, that’s a different story.”

Federal law generally does say that those who are in the country without authorization — either because they jumped the border or have overstayed their visas — are deportable.

But Mr. Obama has claimed broad discretion to decide whom to deport out of the 11 million illegal immigrants estimated to be in the country, arguing that Congress only appropriated enough money to deport about 400,000 people a year and so he must pick and choose whom to deport.

Homeland Security officials argue that nearly all of those they deport do meet one of their priority categories of having a criminal record or having previously been deported and returned to the U.S. in violation of that removal.

In her interview with Telemundo, Mrs. Pelosi said she disputes that, saying she’s appeared alongside some of those she said shouldn’t have been deported.

...Still, Mrs. Pelosi said she is not sure whether Mr. Obama has the authority to grant a broad suspension of deportations for parents of so-called Dreamers, the illegal immigrants whom the president already carved out of danger of deportation in an executive action last year.

“I don’t know whether he has the authority,” Mrs. Pelosi, California Democrat, said. “But I think that there is discretion in the law as to the implementation, enforcement of the legislation that is calling for these deportations.” Read more about Pelosi calls for Obama to halt deportations

...Speaker Boehner’s crocodile tears in his attacks and cries against the conservative movement are really about the next fight. Speaker Boehner intends to pursue immigration reform, with an amnesty component. Before he gets there, he needs to shape battle lines.

There are a number of fence sitters on the right. Speaker Boehner needs them on his team. By castigating the conservative movement now and making them the unpopular crowd, the Speaker and Republican leaders intend to draw the fence sitters to them. Once they have done so, they can move on to a primary season where they can fight against the unpopular crowd intent on driving some incumbents from office.

Then the real fight will begin — immigration reform. The Speaker assumes he can marginalize conservatives through primary season, make conservatives unpopular, then push through an amnesty based immigration reform plan daring his tenuous coalition to move over to the unpopular kids’ table.

....the Speaker is laying the ground work for his legacy — he will be the man who gets immigration reform through the House of Representatives. He is already staffing up on this front.

Rebecca Tallent is the Speaker’s new immigration policy director. Until last week, Ms. Tallent served as the director of immigration policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center. Before that, she worked for Senator John McCain as his Chief of Staff. Ms. Tallent helped Senators McCain and Kennedy formulate their amnesty based immigration plan in 2007....

It would be very unusual for Speaker Boehner to bring on Ms. Tallent, given her background, unless he was ready to go forward with immigration reform.  Likewise, it would be unusual given her background for Ms. Tallent to go work for someone not interested in comprehensive immigration reform.

....Fence sitters in the Republican Party should be careful, lest they wind up working against their own goals in the next fight. Read more about Boehner’s Crocodile Tears for Amnesty