05/21/13 Today, the Senate Judiciary Committee advanced the immigration legislation by a bipartisan vote (13-5).  The vote concludes the committee markup process in the Senate and signifies the clearing of the first official legislative hurdle for immigration reform’s passage in 2013 (see here for a list of “good and bad” amendments added to the Senate bill [...]
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05/21/13 Update: Cruz 3 has just been rejected on a 5-13 vote. Senators supporting a permanent, second-class status: Sessions, Lee, Grassley, Cruz, Cornyn. Right now the Senate Judiciary Committee (#CIRmarkup) is considering Sen. Ted Cruz’s amendment 3, one of the worst amendments that has been proposed to the Senate Gang of 8 immigration bill.  Cruz seems [...]
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05/21/13 Having worked through a majority of its amendments, the Senate Judiciary Committee is in the final stages of marking up the bipartisan immigration reform bill.  According to Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT), who led the process thoughtfully and fairly, the markup is likely to finish today. The biggest takeaway?  Although some call the path [...]
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05/21/13 Watch live-stream here. Here’s what happened today in the Senate Judiciary Committee markup, from the Senate Judiciary Committee majority staff: Day Five Recap: Committee Concludes Consideration of Immigration Reform Bill The Senate Judiciary Committee today completed consideration of S.744, the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act.  The immigration reform bill will make the [...]
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05/21/13 Last week, more than 140 civil and immigrant rights organizations signed a letter asking the Senate Judiciary Committee to PROTECT and EXTEND the path to citizenship they are currently debating in markup. As the letter states: Allowing the 11 million undocumented immigrants in this country to become citizens after meeting appropriate requirements will make America stronger. It [...]
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05/21/13 The Hill: Senate Democrats work to woo Cornyn, Hatch on immigration reform By Alexander Bolton NBC Latino: Singular focus on scandals can doom both parties By Sandra Lilley PolicyMic: Immigration Reform 2013: Slowed Down By IRS, AP, Benghazi Scandals? By Taylor Hom SENATE MARKUP RECAP & PREVIEW OF TODAY Associated Press: Judiciary Committee nearing final [...]
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05/20/13 A coalition of immigration reform opponents called Ban Amnesty Now has announced a number of anti-immigrant events for tomorrow, May 21, at Senators’ offices and state capitols around the country.  They haven’t announced that 20,000 people nationwide will be participating, perhaps because that would be hard to believe considering the support their social media numbers [...]
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05/20/13 Daily Beast: How the White House Scandals Help Immigration Reform Move Forward By Patricia Murphy The Guardian: US lawmakers reach deal on pathway to citizenship for undocumented migrants By Ed Pilkington SENATE MARKUP PREVIEW AND ADDITIONAL SENATE DEVELOPMENTS Associated Press: Senate Committee Moves Toward Vote on Immigration By Erica Werner Bloomberg: Immigration Encounters Business-Labor Rift [...]
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05/17/13 If you think the Senate Judiciary Committee’s markup of the Gang of 8 bill has been intense so far, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. As the SJC moves into Titles II and III of the bill—which cover everything from E-Verify to detention policy to family immigration to agricultural workers, not to mention the path to [...]
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05/17/13 On her radio show yesterday, conservative talk show host Laura Ingraham said that immigration reform would turn the US into a “third world,” if passed. Ingraham was commenting on a clip of Marco Rubio describing the IRS news as “things you typically see in the third world.”  Ingraham added, “Well, we’re going to become a [...]
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05/17/13 USA Today: Immigration plan continues moving through Senate By Alan Gomez NATIONAL Washington Post: Bipartisan House Group Reaches Preliminary Immigration Deal By Ashley Parker Reuters: House lawmakers reach tentative deal to revamp immigration By Richard Cowan and Rachelle Younglai Washington Post: Hatch negotiates to expand H-1B visas as part of Senate immigration bill By David [...]
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05/16/13 Is Tom Tancredo really thinking about running for Colorado Governor?? From the Denver Post today: Tancredo, who represented Colorado’s 6th Congressional District from 1999 to 2009, strongly opposes amnesty for anyone in the country illegally, and he advocates for increased border security. In an op-ed piece for The Christian Post in March,Tancredo wrote that “the problem [...]
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05/15/13 Burnt Orange: John Cornyn’s Hypocrisy on Immigration Reform By Katherine Haenschen SENATE JUDICIARY MARKUP DAY 2 COVERAGE Washington Post: Senators protect fragile compromise on H-1B visas, fend off immigration bill amendments By JD Harrison Politico: On tech visas, Orrin Hatch holds some cards By Seung Min Kim and Carrie Budoff Brown Washington Post: Two controversial [...]
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05/15/13 As we start markup on the Senate Gang of 8 immigration bill again tomorrow, watch out for Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX)’s continuing hypocrisy on immigration reform. This week, the Senator released a new video (and wrote an op-ed) portraying himself as an advocate of migrants who die in the desert while trying to come into the US. [...]
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05/14/13 Liveblogging the CIR Markup, Day 2: 2:07 PM: By the way, during the earlier discussion of Sessions’ amendment 1, Sen. Sessions repeated the conservative claim that immigration reform will hurt African-American workers. Peter Curstenow testified before our committee, a member of the civil rights commission along with Abigail Thurstrom a brilliant member of that commission wrote [...]
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05/13/13 UPDATE: Here’s Jamelle Bouie at the Washington Post today, writing about this story and how it relates to immigration reform: Pantoja’s departure from the Republican Party is instructive. Not only does it illustrate the dynamic of the last four years — where Latino voters responded to negative Republican rhetoric by going further into the Democratic [...]
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05/13/13 We’ve written a few pieces about the Heritage Foundation’s complete implosion last week following the release of their panned economics of immigration study and the revelation that one of its co-authors believes that “Hispanic immigrants will have low-IQ children and grandchildren.”  At the Deseret News today is a great piece on the topic from former Senator [...]
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05/13/13 After a town hall earlier this month in which Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) referred to immigrants as “anchor babies,” members of the Wisconsin immigrant-rights group Voces de la Frontera (and their youth arm, Youth Empowered in the Struggle), collected and delivered 7,226 petitions asking Ryan to apologize for using the term. Last week, members of [...]
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05/13/13 New York Times: In Immigration Bill Talks, House Group Raises Voice By Ashley Parker Daily Beast: Immigration’s Odd Couple: Two Puerto Rican Congressmen Forge a Deal By Sandra McElwaine The Hill: Issa tapped for major role on immigration By Jennifer Martinez The Hill: Senate Judiciary panel to debate high-skilled immigration amendments By Jennifer Martinez NBC: [...]
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05/10/13 Ben Jealous, President and CEO of the NAACP, posted this great article on African Americans and immigration reform at Huffington Post today.  It’s entitled “No Second Class Families,” and you can read an excerpt of it below: African Americans have spent much of our history fighting for equal treatment. Just two generations ago, our parents [...]
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05/10/13 Virtually all of the GOP’s top-tier potential candidates for president in 2016—Marco Rubio, Paul Ryan, Jeb Bush, Rand Paul—are supporters of immigration reform.  For whoever runs, Florida will be a crucial, must-win state.  And Florida supports immigration reform too. A new poll released this week by the Public Policy Institute, and commissioned by the Florida [...]
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05/10/13 This Sunday–Mothers’ Day–will mark the five-year anniversary of the Postville, Iowa immigration raid, still one of the largest in history. Our colleague, Matt Hildreth, who lives in Iowa, is at events marking the anniversary and will have a report later. Here’s an excerpt from last year’s New York Times article, which tells the story: Around 10 on a [...]
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05/10/13 Washington Post (Blog): Can immigration reform really be made much more `conservative’? By Greg Sargent TIME: The Gang Reaches Across the Aisle as Senate Immigration Debate Kicks Off By Alex Altman The Hill: Coons withdraws amendment to stop deportations to unsafe areas By Alexander Bolton BuzzFeed: Heritage Immigration Implosion Could Pull In More Anti-Immigration Scholarship [...]
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05/09/13 The mark up of the Senate immigration reform bill is underway. At the start of their meeting today, the Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Patrick Leahy (D-VT), and the Ranking Republican, Chuck Grassley (R-IA), gave opening statements that set the tone for what’s to come. Leahy, who is a champion for immigration reform, made [...]
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05/09/13 TIME: Immigration Bill Faces First Major Test By Alex Altman Talking Points Memo: Poison Pills And Deal Breakers: Senate Panel Considers 300 Amendments To Immigration Reform Bill By Benjy Sarlin Arizona Republic: Immigration-reform bill faces 1st major test By Erin Kelly Bloomberg: Social Security Agency Says Immigration Bill Would Boost Revenue By Lisa Lerer Washington [...]
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05/08/13 The Heritage Report has had a rough week, after being criticized by everyone from Paul Ryan to Marco Rubio to Jeff Flake.  Co-author of the report Robert Rector admitted that he hasn’t even examined the full immigration bill that his study critiques, and told Larry Kudlow that the report didn’t bother to calculate the economic benefits from immigrants. Keep in mind, this Heritage Report [...]
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05/08/13 Associated Press: Immigration bill confronts hundreds of amendments By Erica Werner PBS Newshour: Chambliss’ Hole-in-One Puts Obama in Play on Budget Talks By Christina Bellatoni and Katelyn Polanz SENATE JUDICIARY MARK-UP PREVIEW & AMENDMENT ANALYSIS Washington Post: Senate immigration bill elicits a flood of amendments By David Nakamura and Ed O’Keefe Wall Street Journal: Immigrant [...]
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