05/14/13 The anti-immigrant ProEnglish, founded by white nationalist John Tanton, is now running ads against the immigration reform bill. And, this time, the extreme opponents of immigration reform are being seen for what they are. Buzzfeed’s headline reads: Controversial “Pro-English” Group Launches Ad Campaign To Take Down Immigration Reform. The subtitle is even more on point: “Group tied to [...]
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05/09/13 Senator Jeff Sessions has established himself as one of the leading opponents of immigration reform. We expect him to put on quite a show against immigration reform as markup continues over the next few weeks. Today, Sessions began challenging Chuck Schumer over aspects of the “Gang of Eight” bill. But Schumer was having none of [...]
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04/23/13 The Republican Party has embarked on a major overhaul of its recent anti-immigrant stance, spurred in large part by historically low levels of support from Latino voters in the 2012 elections.  Yet judging from the witnesses that Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Chuck Grassley (R-IA) called at yesterday’s immigration hearing, not everyone in the GOP [...]
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04/22/13 Today, at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on immigration reform, the Ranking Minority member, Chuck Grassley, invited Kris Kobach, the former General Counsel of FAIR, the author of Arizona’s SB 1070, the architect of self-deportation and the immigration advisor to Mitt Romney, to testify. Senator Dick Durbin asked Kobach a series of questions about the [...]
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04/22/13 Today, the Senate Judiciary Committee is holding a hearing on the immigration reform legislation drafted by the “Gang of Eight.” As we noted in the post below, the anti-immigrant Senators, led by Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and leader of the “Gang of Hate” Jefferson Beauregard Sessions (R-AL) on the panel invited several witnesses from the Tanton [...]
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04/22/13 Edit: Steve Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies testified today as well.  That makes THREE CIS-related witnesses, and two other Tanton-network witnesses, for a total of five. Today’s Senate Judiciary committee hearing on immigration and the bill released last week will be a jam-packed event, featuring four panels filled with business owners, former elected officials, [...]
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04/17/13 Some people never learn. After the 2012 elections, in which Republicans lost Hispanic voters by more than a 3-1 margin, many Republicans started coming around on immigration reform and accepting the need to move forward on legislation.  The Republican National Committee admitted the party needed to rebrand itself with Latinos and released a whole “autopsy” [...]
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03/04/13 Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, an anti-immigrant ultra-extremist who is responsible for state laws like Arizona’s SB 1070, hasn’t been much seen or heard from in the current immigration debate.  And if the Kansas-based grassroots group Sunflower Community Action has anything to say about it, he’ll stay out of the picture. Late last week, [...]
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01/23/13 Cross-posted at Daily Kos: Happy anniversary! One year ago today, January 23, at a GOP presidential debate in Florida, Mitt Romney first announced his support for self-deportation and set the stage for his loss in November.  To jog your memory, here’s how Romney responded to a question from co-moderator Adam Smith of the Tampa Bay Times about how a President [...]
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01/17/13 Poor Kris Kobach.  It’s one thing to be maligned by people you hate and believe should self-deport, but it’s another thing to be called out by those who are supposed to be your friends. Last week we wrote about how Kobach, the architect of state anti-immigrant laws like Arizona’s SB 1070 and Alabama’s HB 56, [...]
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01/10/13 Mississippi, well-aware of how HB 56 in Alabama turned out, is wary of proceeding with its own anti-immigrant bills.  Texas is backing away from last year’s push to crack down on immigrants.  Even Georgia is seeking to make changes to its current legislation. Kansas, however, it seems is another matter.  The home state of Kris [...]
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11/21/12 This Thanksgiving, there’s a lot to be thankful for – family, food, and the growing movement for citizenship that we are all a part of. But while Thanksgiving means giving thanks, it also means turkey. That’s why we’re holding a contest to elect one lucky anti-immigrant extremist as our “Turkey of the Year!” We’ll announce [...]
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11/21/12 Last weekend, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC)  criticized Mitt Romney’s post-election “gift” comments and offered advice to the Republican Party regarding its lurch to the right on immigration policy and its thumping by Latino voters: “When you’re in a hole, stop digging.  He [Romney] keeps digging.” Added Senator Graham, “The Hispanic community, 71 percent voted for [...]
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11/20/12 Sixty DREAMers from Kansas, Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi and Arizona joined with local leaders from Sunflower Community Action and a coalition of activists today in Topeka to ask Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach to end his lawsuit against President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and to resign from office. As Sulma Arias, [...]
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11/20/12 Earlier this year the immigration reform community won a huge victory when President Obama announced a deferred action policy to stop the deportations of DREAMers. But now the program is under attack from anti-immigrant extremist Kris Kobach, the Kansas Secretary of State, who has filed a lawsuit to stop it. We can’t let extremist politicians like [...]
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11/19/12 Top Republican and conservative leaders, from House Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor to FOX News personality Sean Hannity and columnist Charles Krauthammer, have spent the last few weeks lamenting their party’s dramatic losses with Latino voters in the recent election.  Chief among their reflections, and the reflections of political observers of all [...]
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10/12/12 Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach is the self-styled leader of the dwindling anti-immigrant movement.  After the Arizona and Alabama laws he crafted were found mostly unconstitutional (except for their “show me your papers” provisions), Kobach launched a new vendetta. This time, he’s going after DREAMers, in the form of a lawsuit seeking to end [...]
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10/10/12 Two months ago, Kansas Secretary of State and SB 1070 architect Kris Kobach, who also serves as Mitt Romney’s immigration advisor, joined forces with Roy Beck of NumbersUSA and Chris Crane of the ICE Union to file a lawsuit against DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano and ICE Director John Morton.  Their intent: to block the implementation of [...]
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09/21/12 TO: Ruben Navarrette FROM:  Frank Sharry RE:  Thanks for the shout out Hey Ruben, I read your nationally-syndicated column today.  Thanks for the shout out to America’s Voice and me.  As is always the case, your column is a must-read.  I don’t always agree with you, but especially during non-election years it’s my humble opinion [...]
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09/18/12 The relationship status between Mitt Romney and Kris Kobach remains complicated. Romney claimed yesterday that he has “not met” with Kobach, the infamous architect of the “show me your papers” immigration approach that forms the heart of the Arizona and Alabama state laws, as well as Romney’s articulated “self-deportation” vision for immigration policy. Despite Romney’s [...]
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09/17/12 UPDATE: CNN updated its article with a statement from the Romney campaign: Asked for clarification, a spokesman for the Romney campaign said Romney and Kobach have, in fact, met before at campaign events – but not in formal policy meetings. The aide said that in Monday’s radio interview, Romney was referring to policy meetings, which [...]
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09/17/12 Follow Frank Sharry on Twitter: www.twitter.com/franksharry Boston, you have a problem. Your guy, Mitt Romney, is losing badly with Latinos and it could cost him the election. Battleground states such as Nevada, Colorado, Florida and even Virginia are likely to swing Obama’s way if he keeps his current 66 percent – 29 percent lead among Latinos. And Boston, [...]
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09/14/12 In Kansas, Kris Kobach–the lawyer behind the odious Arizona and Alabama “show me your papers” laws and the man driving the immigration agenda of Mitt Romney’s Republican Party–has somehow gone even further off the rails and is now embracing discredited “birther” conspiracy theories. As Talking Points Memo highlights: Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, an [...]
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08/29/12 Last week, Romney advisor Kris Kobach led the effort to make the RNC platform an extremely anti-immigrant document. As we noted,  Kobach wanted everyone to know he wasn’t just pushing his own agenda. He pointed out that the anti-immigrant provisions are  “consistent with the Romney campaign.” The RNC platform was released publicly yesterday. We checked it [...]
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08/27/12 Maribel Hastings is a senior adviser to America’s Voice: TAMPA, Florida – Hurricane Isaac shouldn’t be the only thing on Republicans’ minds as they congregate in Tampa this week for the Republican National Convention, which is expected to officially crown Mitt Romney as the party’s candidate for President of the United States on Thursday. What [...]
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08/24/12 With the news that Maricopa County’s Sheriff Joe Arpaio will be attending next week’s Republican National Convention, we have compiled a list of convention guests and delegates whose positions on immigration could be described as bad, worse, and worser.  As talk show host Carlos Galindo reacted to the Sheriff Arpaio news on Daily Kos: What would possess you to [...]
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08/23/12 Kris Kobach, immigration advisor to the Romney campaign, architect of the infamous Arizona and Alabama immigration laws, and driving force behind the Republican Party’s hard line platform on immigration, today joined with Roy Beck of NumbersUSA, the head of a leading anti-immigrant organization, and Chris Crane, the head of the ICE Union, to file a [...]
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