America's Voice Blog

Posted 11/11/09 at 10:22am By Web Team

GOP Doesn’t Flog Immigration in House Health Care Vote—King Asks, Where’s the Wedge?

KingIn the aftermath of Saturday's landmark passage of a health care reform bill in the House of Representatives, many Republican Members of Congress are scratching their heads and wondering how they could have allowed the bill to pass. They are questioning why their leadership didn't agree to use the immigration issue to kill the bill by offering a tough anti-immigrant amendment at the end of debate.

As Roll Call reports, "conservative Republicans were perplexed and angry Monday that their leaders decided not to force Democrats into a tough immigration vote that they believe could have brought down the bill." Chief among these conservatives decrying his leadership's decision is Rep. Steve King (R-IA), who stated:

"I wanted to put everything into killing the bill. I wasn't interested in anything that had later political calculations. Whenever you get something this bad, when you have a chance to kill it, you have to kill it."

Clearly, Rep. King is not interested in strategies with "later political calculations" -- if so, he wouldn't have designed his party's horrendous Latino and immigrant scapegoat strategy that is threatening to turn the GOP into a regional party for the foreseeable future.

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Posted 10/02/09 at 02:24pm By Frank Sharry

BREAKING: Senate Democrats Do Have Spines, After All

Cross-posted at Huffington Post and Daily Kos.

A couple weeks ago, right after the “Joe Wilson” episode, it sure looked like Senators on both sides of the aisle were competing to see who could impose the harshest restrictions on immigrants in the health insurance reform bill – all at the taxpayer’s expense.

Anti-immigrant groups like FAIR, aided and abetted by pundits like CNN’s on-air immigrant-basher Lou Dobbs, and validated by rabble-rousing Congressmen like Joe Wilson, were trying to kill health care reform with their typical line that new benefits were going to be provided to undocumented immigrants. It wasn’t true—but, as it turns out, facts don’t often matter with this crowd.

But, a funny thing happened to the nativists’ agenda this week.

Although GOP Senators meticulously crafted a series of “get-tough” amendments designed to inflict maximum pain on immigrants and to make Democrats so afraid of looking soft on immigrants they would cave, their strategy failed. Why?  Because Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee stopped them cold.

That’s right.  Led by Senators Bob Menendez (D-NJ) and Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), Democrats repeatedly killed mean-spirited immigration amendments to health reform offered by Sen. Grassley (IA) and Sen. Kyl (AZ). The votes were largely along party lines.

One of the most egregious amendments was defeated last night when Democrats voted down Senator Kyl’s amendment aimed at legal immigrants. Yes, the GOP obsession with “getting tough” on immigrants runs so deep that Sen. Kyl and his colleagues targeted people lawfully present in the country paying full taxes to the government.   Mike Lillis of the Washington Independent reports:

Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) said the Kyl proposal, aside from treating legal residents like second-class citizens, would also put those folks in the tough position of being forced to buy insurance without lending the means to do so. “That clearly is a Catch 22,” he said.

We saw evidence of that same attitude toward lawful immigrants and Latino Americans from leading Republicans during the Sotomayor confirmation debate. It’s not pretty — and it’s just bad politics. According to conservative columnist Ruben Navarrette:

Judge Sonia Sotomayor cruised through her confirmation hearings without a scratch. Too bad we can't say the same about the seven Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee who tried to dent her credibility and wound up demolishing their own. The problem wasn't that Republican senators challenged Sotomayor. That's their job. The problem was that they did their job in such an obsessive and boorish way so as to make clear to the entire country that they had no idea how to deal with someone like Sotomayor.

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Posted 09/30/09 at 02:43pm By Jackie Mahendra

Extreme Groups Push Amendments to Bar Legal Immigrants, Block Millions from Buying Insurance

UPDATE:  The Sen. Kyl amendment for tax credits, which would have undermined the confidentiality of tax information, went down after a brief debate. Senator Rockefeller called it dreadful, and Sen. Bingaman repeated that it was a solution looking for a problem that doesn't exist.  Thanks to all who have made phone calls already.

nasty graphicToday the Senate Finance Committee is considering several key amendments on immigration to the current health insurance reform legislation.   The worst amendments are sponsored by Senators Kyl (R-AZ), Grassley (R-IA) and Ensign (R-NV).

Check out this alert by reform advocates working on the intersection of healthcare and immigration policy -- please take a moment to call your Senators now to oppose amendments that are bad policy for all Americans.

As you’d expect, anti-immigrant organizations are calling on their members to light up the phones. FAIR, the leading anti-immigraton lobbying organization, which is recognized as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, is urging its activists today to oppose any inclusion of legal immigrants in health insurance reform. Hate groups like FAIR will continue to spread lies about immigrants and health care.  And, they’ll continue to feed misinformation to their allies on Capitol Hill. 

We’ve reached a point in the health care debate where yesterday we had to ask legislators who support such measures, "What part of LEGAL don't you understand?"

Senator Steve King (R-IA), as blogger Dave Neiwert pointed out at Crooks and Liars, was so eager to throw immigrants under the bus this week that he even eschewed traditional conservative values of the free market:

In typical fashion, Rep. King read the word “immigrant” and jumped on it, telling the Washington Times: "If anybody can, with a straight face, advocate that we should provide health insurance for people who broke into our country, broke our law and for the most part are criminals, I don't know where they ever would draw the line.”  Never mind the fact that no one was advocating taxpayer assistance to undocumented workers, but simply the right to purchase health insurance with their own money.  Since when were Republicans like King so opposed to the free market?  Oh right – when it involves undocumented immigrants, who “for the most part are criminals,” according to King.

Free-market Steve King vs. Anti-immigrant Steve King. That pretty much sums up how absurd this debate has become.

I'm no health policy expert, but it makes sense that immigrants should have access to affordable health care.  Even Fox news anchors agree that it pays to let undocumented immigrants buy their own health insurance, instead of blocking them from doing so.

On a positive note, common sense has triumphed in some areas of the debate today. Senator Grassley proposed a new verification requirement that would have caused problems for U.S. citizens and immigrants alike.  Fortunately, It was defeated by a 10- 13 margin. All the Republicans, including Olympia Snowe (ME), on the Finance Committee voted with Grassley. All the Democrats opposed his amendment.

Your phone calls to Congress do matter -- so don't forget to tell Congress where you stand.

Note: Cross-posted at Daily Kos.

Posted 09/25/09 at 10:34am By Jackie Mahendra

Senator Grassley Channels Wilson; Maher Asks: “What do Republicans Want a Bleeding Mexican to Do?”

Earlier this week, Senator Grassley (R-IA) pulled a Wilson.

He claimed that the Baucus health insurance reform bill did not include sufficient provisions to keep undocumented immigrants from accessing care under the proposed health insurance reforms, as if we hadn't had enough GOP immigration wedge politics in one month.

Watch it here:

Andrea Nill, at the Wonk Room, summarized that rant this way:

Grassley slammed Baucus’ proposed health care plan for not containing REAL ID requirements or provisions that would force the Internal Revenue Service, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Social Security Administration to share information to prevent undocumented immigrants with stolen SSNs from collecting benefits. He also feared that undocumented immigrants might be infiltrating Indian tribes and posing as Native Americans, who will be subject to less stringent verification requirement.

Tom Klouda and Thomas Barthold , Senate Finance Committee Professional Staff Members, rebutted Grassley’s arguments, citing expert opinion from the National Association of Medicaid Fraud  that proved that identity theft was an extremely minor concern of Medicaid fraud – thus debunking Grassley’s claims.
 
Is Senator Grassley motivated by the GOP’s political strategy of opposing all health care reform, no matter the cost  (or saved costs) to Americans? The Campaign for America’s Future reports Republican Senator Jim DeMint as saying:

If we are able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him.

The same article argues that Grassley, who was elected in Iowa with bipartisan support, is fast losing his Democratic and Independent supporters  -- votes that he needs to get reelected.

Using undocumented immigrants as a wedge to sink healthcare is a highly questionable tactic, both morally and politically. 

But let's get to the real question.

As Bill Maher asks with piercing humor, "What do Republicans Want a Bleeding Mexican to Do?":


Original Video - More videos at TinyPic
Posted 09/18/09 at 08:56am By Jackie Mahendra

On Citizenship Day, Cong. Gutierrez Announces Major Immigration Reform Plans

Gutierrez

Update: I'll update ongoing blog coverage of the announcement below the fold.

Yesterday Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) spoke at the National Citizenship Day celebration in Washington, DC, in front of Members of Congress and hundreds of community leaders, who urged him to introduce real immigration reform legislation, real soon. To an eager crowd, Rep. Gutierrez announced that he would introduce such comprehensive immigration reform legislation this Fall, and in a press statement late yesterday, said:

I am overwhelmed by the support of immigrant, faith-based and community-based organizations in urging me to introduce comprehensive immigration legislation. We simply cannot wait any longer for a bill that keeps our families together, protects our workers and allows a pathway to legalization for those who have earned it.  Saying immigration is a priority for this Administration or this Congress is not the same as seeing tangible action, and the longer we wait, the more every single piece of legislation we debate will be obstructed by our failure to pass comprehensive reform.

Rep. Gutierrez has been playing a major role in moving reform forward and has been standing strong for rational policy in the face of an increasingly-ugly Republican strategy to use immigration as a wedge to sour the health care debate -- a play which has largely caught Democratic Senators and the Administration flat-footed.

During the last year, Rep. Gutierrez has led a series of listening tours and major interfaith community events under the banner of the "Familias Unidas" tour. It was at one of the Tour's stops that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi argued passionately:

"Our future is about our children."

No matter if those families arrived two days ago or centuries ago, Pelosi said "that opportunity, that determination, that hope has made American more American."

She said, "Taking parents from their children ... that's un-American."

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Posted 09/15/09 at 10:52am By Frank Sharry

Immigration Must Reads: Healthcare and Immigration as Hate Group Descends on Washington

Health care and undocumented immigrants is all the rage since Joe Wilson insulted the President last week. Remarkably, Baucus and the White House have responded by seeming to cave.  Today, we have a New York Times piece on the Baucus bill, an excellent summary of what’s happening by Michael Scherer of TIME Magazine, a brilliant fact check by Marshall Fitz at the Center for American Progress, and a Politico piece aptly titled: “Politics trumps policy in health debate.”
 
And in light of yesterday’s Roll Call advertisement, Spencer S. Hsu of the Washington Post writes a piece on how advocates from America’s Voice, the Southern Poverty Law Center, Media Matters and the National Council of La Raza are hitting at the Federation for American Immigration Reform for its ties to white nationalism.

As we speak, faith leaders are gathering outside the Capitol building with Reps. Jared Polis (D-CO) and Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) to "pray for an 'end to hateful rhetoric that creates a toxic environment for immigrant families,'” notes the Baltimore Sun Times.

Read ‘em and let me know what you think.

Posted 09/14/09 at 01:22pm By Frank Sharry

White House Joins Democratic Senators to Appease Joe Wilson

Wilson Obama

Note: Cross-posted at Huffington Post and The Sanctuary.

On Friday I explained how Rep. Joe Wilson’s controversial heckling during President Obama's joint Congressional address last Wednesday laid bare the ugly-as-ever, Republican illegal immigration wedge strategy for the nation to see.

What’s more astounding, I argued, was that key Democrats, Senators Baucus (D-MO) and Conrad (D-ND) to be specific, seemed to be validating Wilson's outburst.  Republicans were scaring up a fake bogeyman – the undocumented immigrant who would benefit from taxpayer funded health insurance – and rather than pushing back with the facts, Baucus and Conrad told the American public to take them seriously.

Raising red flags, the White House took a similar tack late Friday evening, as ABC's political blogger Jake Tapper reports:

And within this conceit, the White House has declared the following:

  • "Undocumented immigrants would not be able to buy private insurance on the exchange. Those who are lawfully present in this country would be able to participate.

  • "Undocumented immigrants would be able to buy insurance in the non-exchange private market, just as they do today. That market will shrink as the exchange takes hold, but it will still exist and will be subject to reforms such as the bans on pre-existing conditions and caps.

  • "Verification will be required when purchasing health insurance on the exchange. One option is the SAVE program (Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements) which states currently use to make sure that undocumented immigrants don’t participate in safety-net programs for which they are ineligible.

  • "There would be no change in the law that requires emergency rooms to treat people who need emergency care, including undocumented immigrants. There is already a federal grant program that compensates states for emergency room costs associated with treatment of undocumented immigrants, a provision sponsored by a Republican lawmaker."

As a friend of mine remarked incredulously Friday night, "Wait, wait. We're going to say you can't BUY something in America?"

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