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California businesses pushing GOP lawmakers to back immigration overhaul
Curtis Tate, McClatchy Newspapers July 22, 2013 WASHINGTON — As a comprehensive immigration overhaul appears stuck, for the moment, in the House of Representatives, an influential coalition is betting that members of Congress from California can break the logjam. Prominent Republicans and their traditional allies in the business community frame an immigration overhaul as both crucial to […]
Read MoreHearing Highlights Similarities Between Senate Immigration Bill and House Border Bill
Ostensibly, the July 23rd hearing of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Border and Maritime Security was about the many differences between the Senate’s immigration-reform bill and the House’s border-enforcement bill. The hearing was even titled “A Study in Contrasts: House and Senate Approaches to Border Security.” However, while highlighting very real differences between the […]
Read MoreAn Unlikely Couple: The Similar Approaches to Border Enforcement in H.R. 1417 and S. 744
The House of Representatives and the Senate have embarked upon very different paths when it comes to immigration reform. On June 27, the Senate passed a comprehensive immigration reform bill—S. 744 (the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act)—that seeks to revamp practically every dysfunctional component of the U.S. immigration system. The House leadership, on the other hand, favors a piecemeal approach in which a series of immigration bills are passed, each addressing a different aspect of the larger immigration system. To date, the most popular of these piecemeal bills has been H.R. 1417 (the Border Security Results Act), which was passed unanimously on May 15 by the House Committee on Homeland Security. H.R. 1417 is, in marked contrast to S. 744, an enforcement-only bill which does not acknowledge the existence of any other component of immigration reform.
Nevertheless, the border-enforcement provisions of S. 744 aren’t all that different from those contained within H.R. 1417. Both bills share the arbitrary and possibly unworkable goals of “operational control” (a 90 percent deterrence rate) and 100 percent “situational awareness” along the entire southwest border. The Senate bill also added insult to injury in the form of the Corker-Hoeven (“border surge”) amendment, which seeks to micromanage border-security operations and would gratuitously appropriate tens of billions of dollars in additional funding, and hire tens of thousands of additional Border Patrol agents, before the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has even determined what resource and staffing levels are needed to do the job.
Former Attorney General Gets it Wrong on DOMA and Same Sex Immigration Benefits
Former Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales is advocating in the New York Times that the Supreme Court decision in U.S. v. Windsor, which invalidated Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), should not allow the Obama administration to afford immigration benefits to married, same-sex bi-national couples. Rather, he argues, the administration is bound […]
Read MoreStudy: Immigration Reform Will Create Jobs, Boost GDP
Herald Online July 18, 2013 In conjunction with the American Action Forum, the American Action Network and Americans for Tax Reform, Regional Economic Models, Inc. released an exhaustive report this morning that evaluates the economic effects of key components of immigration reform and finds a net positive effect at the state and national level. The ground-breaking study analyzes the comprehensive, […]
Read MoreImmigration Reform Fattens State Economies, Too
“Should the United States be pro-immigrant?” asked Tax Watchdog Grover Norquist. “That’s like asking whether McDonald’s should make hamburgers. It’s made the United States work for several hundred years. It’s what’s made us different, what’s made us more successful,” said Norquist during a recent call summarizing a new report from Regional Economic Models, Inc. (REMI) […]
Read MoreImmigration reform would boost housing markets
Gary Acosta, Inman News July 15, 2013 Author William R. Alger once said that public opinion is a second conscience. That seems to be the case with public sentiment towards our nation’s immigration policy. A CNN poll shows 84 percent of Americans back a program that would allow undocumented workers to stay in the U.S. […]
Read MoreUSCIS Approves First Green Cards for Same Sex Couples
On June 26, the Supreme Court issued its decision in the case of United States v. Windsor, in which it struck down section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which defined marriage as between a man and a woman for all federal laws. This law meant that the immigration agencies would not recognize […]
Read MoreDREAMers Push For A Path To Citizenship
Ahead of a Wednesday meeting of House Republicans to discuss various options on immigration reform, hundreds of DREAMers—young immigrants who arrived in the U.S. as children—held their own version of a citizenship ceremony and rally yesterday to push for legislation that will provide a roadmap to citizenship for not only themselves but for millions of other […]
Read MoreA Guide to S.744: Understanding the 2013 Senate Immigration Bill
This guide to provide policymakers, the media, and the public with an easy-to-understand guide to the main components of S. 744 and the purpose behind them.
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