Congress

Republicans are already in the beginning stages of planning their legislative agenda if they take control of the Senate in November, and many say immigration reform would be a top priority, even while President Obama's trustworthiness as a legislative partner remains in doubt.

“I don’t know anyone who thinks the immigration system is working the way it should, so we’re gonna have some ideas and we’re going to move them across the floor in smaller consensus — on a consensus basis. And not the sort of divisive, all-or-nothing, pig-in-the-python sort of method,” Senate Minority Whip John Cornyn told Breitbart News last week when asked about the prospect of a GOP-controlled Senate pushing its own immigration reform agenda.

Days earlier, Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio said Republicans would “absolutely” try to pass better immigration reform legislation if the GOP wins the Senate in November.

Even some noted anti-amnesty hawks sounded relatively optimistic.

“I think there is a better prospect that we would go forward with some immigration initiative if the Republicans control the Senate, but we still have the problem of trusting the president. But I think we’d be in a better position to try and enforce the law if we have both the House and the Senate,” Texas Republican Lamar Smith told Breitbart Tuesday.

House Republicans are quick to point out the lack of confidence many have in the Obama administration’s willingness to fully implement what Congress passes.

South Carolina Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy noted that the GOP has controlled the Senate before without passing immigration reform and alluded to concerns about Obama’s lack of enforcement of immigration law.

“That is a very legitimate concern,” Gowdy said of Obama’s enforcement of the law, “and releasing detainees, some of whom have criminal records, really undercuts the authenticity of the president’s argument that he wants to do something.” Gowdy added, “That is impossible to explain.”

A recent report revealed that last year the Obama administration released more than 36,000 criminal immigrants, convicted of nearly 88,000 crimes and awaiting the outcome of deportation proceedings.

The Obama factor is not lost on one of the most vocal Republican backers of immigration reform, but for another reason.

“No matter who pushes immigration, here is your dilemma: We’re not going to get the visas we want, or the border security we want, and the employer verification we want without dealing with the 11 million,” said South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsay Graham, who helped pass an immigration reform bill in the Senate last year.

“President Obama is still going to be president, there is no way he is going to sign a bill into law that doesn’t have some kind of firm, fair treatment of the 11 million, so that’s reality. We may have the House and the Senate but we don’t have the White House,” he added.

While many Republicans say they are for immigration reform, Alabama Republican Rep. Mo Brooks said it is all in the definitions.

“I would say that over 90 percent of congressmen and senators are for immigration reform,” Brooks said Monday, adding that he is for immigration reform himself. “The problem is we have wildly different meanings when we use the phrase immigration reform. To me, for example, getting someone in the White House who enforces our laws and deports illegal aliens, that’s immigration reform. But that is not what Chuck Schumer, or Harry Reid, or Barack Obama mean.”

According to Brooks, Schumer, Reid, and Obama are looking at the current illegal immigrant population as future voters who will influence elections for the Democratic party.

Florida Republican Rep. Mario Diaz Balart (R-FL), on the other hand, has previously warned that Obama may unilaterally enact amnesty, blowing up the chances of a legislative deal. Asked about 2015, he was circumspect.

“I don’t want to talk about hypotheticals, but just a mathematical reality is that we need to do something based on Republican, conservative principles; but we’re going to have to get a few Democrats, obviously, otherwise we’re not going to be able to pass it,” he said.

Schumer told The Hill last week that Democrats likely would not be on board with the idea of immigration reform through separate bills and argued that, if the House did not pass immigration reform before August, it will not happen until 2017 or later.

Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King said he would need to see the details of any proposal and expressed optimism that, should the GOP take the Senate, Iowa Republican Chuck Grassley would likely be the next chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. King said if that were the case, he “would get more sleep at night” and that he believed such an effort “would look dramatically different than the one that came out of the Senate.”

King argued, however, that while lawmakers should have the debate, any new immigration legislation should be saved for another president’s desk.

“My counsel would be let’s have the debate, let's set the groundwork, let’s get to an American consensus, let’s put it on the desk of the next president, because this one has decried his own oath of office,” King said.

“This president will not enforce any law he does not like,” he added. “Plus, you put it on his desk, he’ll veto it, so why make a deal with him? If you make a deal with him you get a bill on his desk that he will sign, he will enforce the parts of the bill he likes; he’ll not enforce the parts he doesn’t like. That’s what he’s doing now.”

Indeed, Tuesday House Speaker Boehner, who has reportedly said he is “hell-bent” on passing immigration reform this year, did not point to the Democratically controlled Senate as the reason the House has not moved forward with immigration reform to date. He pointed to President Obama.

“We’ve talked about this literally every week for the last 18 months, and I think it's clear over the last several months that until the president gives us some reason, some confidence that we can trust him to implement an immigration reform bill, we’re really not going to have much to talk about,” Boehner said. "The ball is in the president’s court.” Read more about Immigration May Come Back With a Vengeance in 2015

NOTE: While we can give a sigh of relief for now, we must not let our guard down - for even a moment.  We know that Congress is  likely plotting and planning something for the lame duck session!

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republican leaders intervened Friday to prevent a vote on U.S. immigration legislation, dealing a severe blow to election-year efforts to overhaul the widely denigrated system.

Rep. Jeff Denham labeled his bill the ENLIST Act and said he would seek a vote as an amendment to the popular annual defense bill, the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA.

In response, Doug Heye, spokesman for House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, said: "No proposed ENLIST amendments to NDAA will be made in order."

Heye said no stand-alone vote on the measure would be permitted, either.

It was the latest setback for President Barack Obama's efforts to move comprehensive immigration legislation through Congress to boost border security, remake legal worker programs and offer legal status to the estimated 11.5 million people now living here illegally. The Senate passed an immigration bill last year, but it's been stalled in the Republican-led House.

Friday's developments seemed to all but rule out anything happening on the issue this year in the House, if even Denham's limited measure could not advance. Despite a wide coalition of business, labor, religious groups, farmers and others pushing for an immigration overhaul, many individual Republican House members who represent largely white districts have been unmoved.

Cantor, House Speaker John Boehner and other House Republican leaders have insisted they want to advance immigration legislation, though they've rejected the Senate's comprehensive bill. Chances have always looked slim, but the White House and outside advocates saw a window for action over the next several months, before Congress' August recess and November midterm elections.

Denham's measure was widely popular and seen as perhaps the likeliest area for compromise.

But in recent weeks prominent conservative groups, including the Heritage Foundation, announced their opposition. Heritage Action, the group's political arm, announced it would include the vote in its ratings on lawmakers and called Denham's legislation "deplorable."

Cantor himself faces a primary election challenge in the state of Virginia June 10 from a tea party opponent who has criticized the majority leader for not being conservative enough and accused him of supporting amnesty for immigrants living here illegally.

Dave Brat, an economics professor at Randolph-Macon College, is a long-shot to unseat Cantor, but his campaign has won attention and support from conservative leaders such as radio host Laura Ingraham, partly because of his attacks against Cantor over immigration.

Denham's office had no immediate reaction to Cantor's announcement. But in an interview beforehand, Denham, who has a competitive race in his heavily Latino district in central California, said he would keep pushing his legislation regardless of what leadership did.

"I am prepared for a long-term fight on this," he said.

Denham's bill would allow immigrants who were brought to this country on or before Dec. 31, 2011, and were younger than 15 years old to become legal, permanent residents — the first step toward citizenship — through honorable service in the military.

It was co-sponsored by 50 House members, 26 Democrats and 24 Republicans, but an outspoken minority was opposed. Rep. Mo Brooks, a Republican, had warned that "all hell will break loose" if Denham tried to promote the measure.

The Senate could still revive the issue if the Senate Armed Services Committee includes the ENLIST Act in its own version of the defense policy bill, something Sen. Carl Levin, a Democrat, the panel chairman, has indicated was possible. Read more about Republican leaders to block US immigration measure

(Washington, D.C. April 23, 2014) As the Obama administration edges closer to unilaterally halting all enforcement of U.S. immigration laws, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is staging an elaborate effort designed to create the illusion of public support for this sweeping and unconstitutional exercise of executive authority, charged the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR).

On Tuesday, Secretary Jeh Johnson met with two dozen immigration policy "stakeholders," all of whom have been part of a campaign to pressure the Obama administration to halt deportations of illegal aliens and implement a de facto amnesty under the guise of prosecutorial discretion. The 24 individuals who met with Johnson represented illegal alien advocacy groups, cheap labor lobbyists, and other outspoken opponents of immigration enforcement.

Since President Obama ordered DHS to review its deportation practices in March, Secretary Johnson has held numerous meetings with political and business advocates for amnesty, but has yet to meet with individuals or organizations representing the interests of the American people.

"The most important stakeholders in U.S. immigration policy are the American people, not the people who break our laws, and not the business interests that want greater access to low-wage foreign labor," declared Dan Stein, president of FAIR. "Yet, for the past five and half years, the Obama administration has consistently refused to acknowledge the interests of struggling American workers and taxpayers who are adversely affected by excessive levels of immigration and lax enforcement.

"While the Secretary’s door is wide open to illegal aliens and their advocates, it has been slammed shut on those who advocate enforcement of U.S. immigration laws in the public interest. These include the unions representing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) personnel, sheriffs, and pro-enforcement advocacy groups," Stein said.

"No amount of staged meetings with narrow political interests and business lobbyists can alter the fact that President Obama has no constitutional authority to implement the policies these so-called stakeholders demand, as the president himself has conceded. Nor do these staged events obscure the fact that the voices of the true stakeholders in U.S. immigration policy — the American people — are being systematically excluded by a rogue administration determined to pursue its political goals at all costs," Stein concluded. Read more about DHS Stages Meeting with So-Called Immigration Stakeholders

...Rep. Steve Israel of New York said Sunday that not all Republicans are motivated by racism but many in the GOP oppose a bipartisan immigration bill on those grounds...

...Nancy Pelosi blamed racial issues for the GOP's failure to act on comprehensive immigration legislation.

Oregon's Rep. Greg Walden, who heads Republicans' efforts to elect House members, said Pelosi's comment was "both wrong and unfortunate."

Israel and Walden spoke on CNN's "State of the Union."

  Read more about Republican base 'animated by racism,' Dem rep says