Tag Archives: Immigration reform

North Carolina Is Getting It Right

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On Tuesday, Breitbart reported that the North Carolina Senate’s Judiciary Committee essentially outlawing sanctuary cities.

The article reports:

Republicans in North Carolina have advanced legislation to outlaw sanctuary jurisdictions, requiring law enforcement to cooperate in turning over criminal illegal aliens to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency.

On Tuesday, the state Senate’s Judiciary Committee approved a bill that will require North Carolina police departments and sheriff’s offices to cooperate with ICE agents when they are trying to take custody of a criminal illegal alien.

With their supermajorities in the state House and Senate, Republicans are expected to approve the bill and override Gov. Roy Cooper’s (D) expected veto. In 2022, the state House and Senate passed the legislation and sent it to Cooper’s desk, but he vetoed the bill.

The bill, if approved, would ensure that North Carolina’s sanctuary jurisdictions — Buncombe County, Durham County, Forsyth County, Mecklenburg County, Orange County, and Wake County — can no longer shield criminal illegal aliens in their custody from immigration enforcement by refusing to turn them over to ICE agents.

Despite its reputation as a red-leaning swing state, North Carolina is home to some of the nation’s most prominent sanctuary jurisdictions. In 2022, the Immigration Reform Law Institute named Wake County as one of the most dangerous sanctuary jurisdictions in the country.

…A vote in the state Senate on the bill is expected this week. The bill was already approved last year by the state House.

People who are here illegally and commit crimes need to be deported. It is no secret that many of the countries sending people here to cross the border illegally are not sending their best. If they are emptying out their prisons, we need to help them fill them up again.

This Isn’t Bipartisanship!

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On Friday, Just the News posted an article about the $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation bill the Democrats are planning to force through Congress.

The article reports:

Expected to be included in the Congressional Democrats’ $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation bill is language that will advance the party’s goals for immigration reform. Working with the White House, a group of top Capitol Hill Democrats are workshopping placing a handful of immigration measures into the spending bill that will likely be passed via budget reconciliation, that is with no Republican support.

For years, efforts to reform the American immigration system have stalled as Democrats and Republicans fail to make any sort of meaningful bipartisan progress on the issue. Now, Democrats are opting to strategically move forward potentially without the need for bipartisan agreement.

As Democrats in Washington scramble to complete the full version of the so-called bipartisan infrastructure bill ahead of an initial procedural vote next Wednesday, details of the massive spending plan meant to accompany the infrastructure legislation are nowhere near fleshed-out, including how they plan to insert immigration policy into a spending bill. Right now, Democrats are, according to Politico, employing a “trial-and-error” approach to the legislation.

Democrats are reportedly attempting to include pathways to citizenship for a number of illegal immigrant groups in the bill, including “dreamers,” who came or were brought to the United States as minors, and farmworkers already living and working in the country. The Hispanic Caucus is also lobbying to include giving out green cards to “essential workers,” including those who work on the frontlines of health professions during the pandemic, as part of the legislation.

It is not clear that the Democrats will be able to include all, or any, of these measures in the final framework of the bill, if they wish to pass it without Republican support. There will likely be a lively back-and-forth with the Senate parliamentarian (who happens to be a former immigration lawyer) regarding what immigration policy can, under the complex and sometimes obscure rules of the Senate, be included in the budget.

To qualify for Senate passage with a simple majority vote, which the $3.5 trillion package theoretically will, any given part of it must directly relate to federal revenue. It remains to be seen how Democrats will retrofit their immigration goals to meet the standards of the Senate rules in that regard.

The bottom line here is simply–the Democrats have never intended to try to work with the Republicans–any time the Democrats have been in power in recent years, they  have ignored any Republican input and simply passed bills unilaterally. We all remember ObamaCare.

Carroll Quigley was an American who lived from 1910 to 1977. He stated:

“The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies… is a foolish idea. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can throw the rascals out at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy. Then it should be possible to replace it, every four years if necessary, by the other party which will be none of these things but will still pursue, with new vigor, approximately the same basic policies.”

Folks, that’s where we are.

The Supreme Court Lost Their Copy Of The Constitution

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Yesterday the Supreme Court ruled to uphold the DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) program. It’s interesting that they chose to uphold the program when President Obama, the author of the program, admitted various times that the program was illegal.

Yesterday PJ Media posted a list of the ten times President Obama declared that his creation of DACA was illegal. Please follow the link to the article for the details, but here is the basic list:

  1. During remarks at a 2010 Cinco de Mayo Celebration
  2. During remarks on comprehensive immigration reform at American University
  3. During an MTV/BET town hall meeting and a question-and-answer session
  4. During a radio interview with Univision
  5. During a Univision town hall
  6. During remarks at a Facebook town hall meeting and a question-and-answer session
  7. During the 2011 Miami Dade College commencement
  8. During remarks on comprehensive immigration reform at Chamizal National Memorial
  9. During remarks to the National Council of La Raza
  10. During a roundtable with questions from Yahoo!, MSN Latino, AOL Latino, and HuffPost Latino Voices

So a President who swore an oath to uphold the Constitution passed a law (a violation of the separation of powers) and now the Supreme Court is not willing to undo that law. That is another reason Americans think Washington has lost its way.

The Western Journal posted a screenshot of a tweet by The Daily Caller summarizing what Justice Thomas said in the dissent:

As usual, Justice Thomas got it right.

 

 

Today At The Supreme Court

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Today the Supreme Court will hear arguments about DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals). It is interesting that the case has taken so long to get to the Supreme Court.

In September 2017, the Heritage Foundation reminded us of the following statement by former President Obama:

Responding in October 2010 to demands that he implement immigration reforms unilaterally, Obama declared, “I am not king. I can’t do these things just by myself.” In March 2011, he said that with “respect to the notion that I can just suspend deportations through executive order, that’s just not the case.” In May 2011, he acknowledged that he couldn’t “just bypass Congress and change the (immigration) law myself. … That’s not how a democracy works.”

I guess he changed his mind. Also, just for the record, former President Obama was supposed to be a Constitutional Law Professor. We are not a democracy–we are a representative republic. Did he know that?

At any rate, DACA is now at the Supreme Court. Yesterday John Hinderaker at Power Line Blog posted an article about the coming hearings.

The article notes:

The long-running battle over the Trump administration’s bid to end the Obama-era program for young undocumented immigrants known as “Dreamers” will land before the Supreme Court on Tuesday.
***
“The administration has basically chalked up the fact that they are going to lose a lot of these cases in the lower courts,” said Thomas Dupree, a former top Bush Justice Department official and now an appellate attorney.

“But they’re playing the long game. I think that there are those in the White House and the Justice Department who have made a calculation saying, ‘Look we can absorb all these losses in the lower courts because we are going to win the endgame when this case gets into the Supreme Court.’”

It remains to be seen how the court will rule, however, on this complicated issue — which concerns the limits of one president trying to rescind the policies of his predecessor.

The article concludes:

I haven’t studied the briefs so as to be up to speed on the technical arguments that will be presented to the Court tomorrow. But at the end of the day, it is hard to see how the courts can hold that the president is legally barred from carrying out his constitutional duty to see that the laws–including the immigration laws–are faithfully executed.

Stay tuned.

One Part Of Solving The Illegal Immigration Crisis

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Breitbart posted an article yesterday about the support for E-Verify, one part of President Trump’s immigration proposal. A new poll finds that E-Verify is supported by at least 3-in-4 likely U.S. voters in six swing states.

According to the latest Zogby Analytics poll conducted for the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), 75 percent to nearly 82 percent among all likely voters in swing states such as Arizona, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin support nationwide, mandatory E-Verify.

The article concludes:

The polls’ findings put likely American swing state voters overwhelmingly on the side of Trump’s “America First” legal immigration plan, with not only broad support for mandatory E-Verify, but also majority support for ending the process known as “chain migration,” whereby newly naturalized citizens can bring an unlimited number of foreign relatives to the U.S.

Each swing state poll was conducted May 23 through May 29 with a margin of errors +/- 4.3 to 4.4 percent.

Ronald Reagan once said, “A nation that cannot control its borders is not a nation.” Our lawmakers need to remember that.

Attempting To Move Toward A Solution

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One America News Network posted an article today about the latest development in the government shutdown. The Republicans are making a sincere effort to reopen the government. The Democrats will join in that effort when their focus groups tell them they are losing the argument. The bill that will be introduced in the Senate this week includes things that the Democrats have voted for in the past. The difference is that we currently have a President who will actually do these things after they vote for them. In the past when Republicans agreed to Democrat terms and let a deal go through, the terms the Republicans were promised never happened. The unwillingness to give in without funding for the wall on the part of the Republicans is the result of lessons learned in the past.

The article reports:

Senate Republicans are releasing a bill to reopen the government. The legislation relates with the president’s proposal he unveiled in his address Saturday, which calls for $5.7 billion for a physical barrier at the southern border and funding for nine closed government agencies.

It also grants a three-year extension for DACA recipients and those under temporary protective status. A plan to ease the asylum process for Central American migrants is also included.

…Senate Republicans said they plan to vote on the bill this week, however, no Democrats have voiced their support for the legislation.

Meanwhile, Democrat Senator Joe Manchin remains on the fence about the president proposal to end the shutdown despite his initial optimism about the deal. On Monday, a spokesperson for the West Virginia lawmaker said Manchin is waiting to see the final draft of the proposal before making a decision.

This comes after Manchin tweeted on Saturday, saying he was looking forward to working with both sides to make the immigration reforms proposed by President Trump happen. However, Democrat leadership has since slammed the plan as a non-starter.

If this bill is blocked in the Senate or in the House of Representatives by the Democrats, they will have to take responsibility for the continuing shutdown. Their unwillingness to vote for things they have voted for in the past is becoming very obvious.

What Changed?

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On December 26th, Byron York posted an article at The Washington Examiner about building a border wall (or border fence).

The article reports:

In 2006 Congress passed the Secure Fence Act, which mandated the construction of multilayer pedestrian fencing along about 600 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border. It passed with big, bipartisan majorities: 283 votes in the House and 80 in the Senate. Some top Democrats who are still in the Senate today supported the fence: Chuck Schumer, Dianne Feinstein, Ron Wyden, Debbie Stabenow, and Sherrod Brown.

Just the next year, Congress made clear it didn’t really mean what it said. The new law was amended to make fence building optional.

In 2013, Congress got back into the fence game. The Gang of Eight comprehensive immigration reform bill included something called the “Southern Border Fencing Strategy.” It called for 700 miles of at least single-layer pedestrian fencing along the border. It wasn’t a standalone measure; the fence was to be part of a broader package of border security measures alongside provisions that would create a process by which the nation’s 11 million illegal immigrants would ultimately gain a path to citizenship.

I wonder if the Democrats would be so anxious to provide a path to citizenship for illegals if the illegals who were granted citizenship were not allowed to vote for ten years or so.

The article lists the Senators who voted for the Southern Border Fencing Strategy:

With citizenship in the deal — even citizenship that would take a decade to achieve in some cases — Democrats were fully on board for a border barrier. The Gang of Eight bill passed in the Senate with 68 votes, including unanimous Democratic support. Name any Democrat who is in the Senate today who was there for that 2013 vote — Schumer, Durbin, Murray, Baldwin, Bennet, Blumenthal, Brown, Cantwell, Cardin, Casey, Coons, Feinstein, Gillibrand, Hirono, Kaine, Klobuchar, Leahy, Manchin, Menendez, Merkley, Murphy, Reed, Sanders, Shaheen, Stabenow, Tester, Warner, Warren, Whitehouse, Wyden — name any, and they voted for the bill that included the Southern Border Fencing Strategy.

Now the government is 1/4 shut down (not necessarily a bad thing) because those same Senators oppose building a border wall (which they can call a fence if they like). What changed?

This Sort Of Logic Makes My Head Hurt

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Yesterday the Daily Caller posted an article about Hillary Clinton’s latest stand on illegal immigration.

The article includes Mrs. Clinton’s latest statement on the subject:

Often times when I have conversations with people who are fearful about immigration reform, their fears are rooted in the feeling that they are losing jobs that are going to people who are undocumented. And part of the reason that fear has a reality to it is because if people can pay you six dollars an hour, because you are undocumented, then why would they pay somebody who already is a citizen what the minimum wage or the prevailing wage should be?

So my argument is, the quicker we can legalize the people who are here, the better the job market will be for everybody because you will not have a group of people who are taken advantage of, and you will not have others who feel as though, and to some extent it is true, they are losing jobs because this group that is being taken advantage of is paid so much less and being treated so much worse.

So my argument to people who worry about comprehensive immigration reform and the effect on their jobs is: it’s just the opposite. The sooner we can get to legalization, the better the job market will be for everybody.

The explanation not given is how adding millions of workers to a struggling jobs market will make things easier for Americans seeking jobs.

Yahoo News reported today:

The ADP (Automatic Data Processing) read came in below estimates at 169K for April vs. estimates of about 205K – the second monthly tally under 200K in a row after 11 straight months of coming above that level. Not only did the April jobs tally miss the mark, but last month’s already-soft reading was further revised down. This doesn’t bode well for Friday’s government jobs report the consensus expectation for the BLS report is for ‘headline’ gains of 220K (per Bloomberg.com), which includes government jobs. As such, this ADP report will most likely prompt folks to lower their estimates for the Friday jobs report.

Adding millions of people to the jobs market at this time is not a good idea. All it will accomplish is to put more people on welfare and unemployment programs and eventually bankrupt the federal budget. It would be better to encourage those here illegally to return to their home countries.

The Extra Zero That Changed The Bill

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There has been a lot of talk recently about the immigration bill that Congress will be considering in the near future. There is one school of thought that says it is a political bill–not designed to pass, but designed to make House Republicans lose the 2014 election. Based on some recent changes to the original bill, that seems to be very likely.

Yesterday Byron York at the Washington Examiner reported that there has been a change in the original bill that significantly changes the cost.

The article reports:

The bill establishes a “Comprehensive Immigration Reform Trust Fund” to cover the various costs of reform.  It directs that when the bill is enacted, $6.5 billion will be transferred from the Treasury to the trust fund.  And then the bill specifies money to be appropriated for the start-up costs of the process to legalize the estimated 11 million immigrants currently in the country illegally.

The original bill said this: “On the later of the date of the enactment of this Act or October 1, 2013, $100,000,000 is hereby appropriated from the general fund of the Treasury, to remain available until September 30, 2015, to the Department [of Homeland Security] to pay for one-time and startup costs necessary to implement this act.”

The substitute bill reads differently: “On the later of the date of the enactment of this Act or October 1, 2013, $1,000,000,000 is hereby appropriated from the general fund of the Treasury, to remain available until September 30, 2015, to the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of State to pay for one-time and startup costs necessary to implement this Act.”

Wow. We went from $100,000,000 to $1,000,000,000, and the bill hasn’t even passed yet. Imagine where it could go if it were passed!

The article in the Washington Examiner includes an update:

UPDATE: After this item was posted, a Gang of Eight spokesman emailed to say that, “The initial $100 million number listed for startup was incorrect; $1 billion is needed to ramp up operations to handle 11 million applicants and other new visa programs.  The money will be refunded to the Treasury from fines collected, so it is deficit neutral over the next few years.”

Somehow that doesn’t make me feel any better.

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An Interesting Perspective On The State of the Union Address

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PJ Media posted its own interpretation of President Obama’s State of the Union address. They were not kind. I’m not saying that they were not accurate; I am simply saying that they were not kind.

The article begins:

The state of our union is weak and fraying. This president has launched attacks on faith and is going out of his way to divide our people. Our economy is not growing, it contracted in the final quarter of 2012. Our economy is not growing jobs. On the international front, North Korea greeted President Obama’s 2013 rendition of Give Me More Money with a nuclear test — a sure sign that his strategy of engagement, which his soon-to-be defense secretary supports, is a failure.

But like with all of his other failed policies, Barack Obama declared that he will just keep on doing them all.

The speech included more taxes on the ‘rich,’ which will neither create jobs or grow the economy. What is the purpose of raising anyone’s taxes? He also stated that “ask more of our wealthy seniors.” You know–those people who have worked and saved all their lives for their retirement.

President Obama stated in so many words that he wanted us all to get along. Somehow he failed to mention that we will not get along until all of us blindly follow him. Somehow I don’t think many Americans are interested in doing that.

The article reminds us:

From there he moved on to pressing for “comprehensive immigration reform.” He claimed that he believes in stronger border security, which simply is not credible when his homeland security chief claims that the border has never been safer while there is a civil war raging in Mexico. He called on people of faith, whom he has attacked via the ObamaCare abortifacient mandate, to help him “get it done” on immigration reform. He hits you with one hand, then wants you to help him with the other.

The article concludes:

Near the blessed end of his speech, Obama hailed the idea and ideals of the citizen. But this president is working to water down the legal meaning of the word. Again, incoherent.

The consequences of Barack Obama’s loose grasp on the real world are just going to have to work themselves out now. He will win some and he will lose some. Hopefully he will lose more than he wins.

“The evil that men do lives after them,” Shakespeare wrote of ambitious men centuries ago. So it will be with Barack Obama, who has done much evil to the Constitution, to the country, and to the concept of truth. He will continue to do more evil to them all for the next four years.

America, you were warned but you re-elected him anyway. And that’s the state of our union.

That is one of the best reports on the speech I have seen.

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