06/18/13 Congratulations, Jeff Sessions–you got your wish! For weeks now, the junior Senator from Alabama — and leading anti-immigrant voice in the Senate — has been complaining about the upcoming Congressional Budget Office score for the Senate Gang of 8 bill.  The CBO usually scores a bill for 10 years, which Sessions didn’t think would be [...]
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06/14/13 This week, the Senate began debate on the immigration reform bill. If you’ve been watching, you’re seeing just how complicated the process in the Senate can be. It’s subject to a lot of delaying tactics and procedural games. As you can imagine, opponents of reform–led by Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III (R-AL)–are using every possible [...]
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06/13/13 Cornyn Amendment Attacks Path to Citizenship, Rubio Moves Erode Trust in Him, Sessions Stalling Tactics Bring Senate Floor Process to a Crawl The Senate immigration reform debate began this week, ushered in by a resounding 84-15 vote on the Motion to Proceed.  Buoyed by polls that show broad bipartisan support for reform with a path [...]
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06/12/13 This week the U.S. Senate began debating immigration reform on the Senate Floor. On a press call/webinar today, Latino Decisions and America’s Voice released the second installment of the latest in a series of tracking polls – all of which underscore the political imperative of passing immigration reform. Sylvia Manzano, Senior Analyst, Latino Decisions said, [...]
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06/07/13 The weeping family members of deportees met with Rep. Gutierrez and other Congressmembers this week, and President Obama is facing protests in California today over his deportation policies, but apparently Jeff Sessions actually believes that “nobody” is being deported from the US anymore. “The federal government has reached a point now where virtually no one is [...]
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06/07/13 Update: Right now, Sessions and Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) are tag-teaming about the virtue of legal immigrants versus those who are undocumented immigrants.  Funny, because earlier this week a Sessions staffer, Danielle Cutrona was on a NumbersUSA call where a speaker came out against LEGAL immigration.  It looks like we’re in for a lot of [...]
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06/03/13 The Senate Gang of 8 immigration bill will likely move to the Senate floor next week, and if there’s one person who’s been in front of the charge to delay and stall the bill, it’s Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions (R-AL). A profile by Jordan Fabian at ABC/Univision today goes into detail: It would be hard [...]
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05/31/13 Immigrants contribute more in to Medicare than they take out, and the Gang of 8 immigration bill would help keep Social Security afloat.  But Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), immigration reform opponent extraordinaire, is still obsessed with finding a way—any way—to prove that immigrants are a drain on society. Sometime in the next few weeks, the [...]
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05/15/13 Yesterday, the Senate Judiciary Committee cast a near-unanimous vote against an amendment from Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) to restrict future legal immigration.  It underscores the growing irrelevance and isolation of the anti-immigrant movement in this year’s debate. According to Frank Sharry, Executive Director of America’s Voice: The anti-immigrant movement thought that their efforts to define and distort the Senate immigration bill combined [...]
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05/09/13 Update: During an interview that a Heritage spokesperson gave on Hispanic radio, it’s unclear whether Richwine would be fired.  The spokesperson defended the report, claiming that the controversial parts might have been “taken out of context.” Jim DeMint’s Heritage Foundation just hasn’t had a very good week. Four days ago, the conservative think tank released [...]
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05/09/13 It’s not a surprise, but Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions (R-AL) has been one of the most anti-immigrant voices at today’s markup. While rookie Ted Cruz is making a surprising run for the title of Worst Senator for Immigrants, longtime veterans Sessions and Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) are making it clear they don’t intend to give up [...]
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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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05/03/13 Outside of a few right-wing outlets, like National Review, Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions doesn’t have a lot of allies in his quest to stop immigration reform these days. This week, he took to the airwaves in Boston to spew his vitriol about immigrants and immigration with notorious radio host Howie Carr. In the twenty minute [...]
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05/01/13 Fresh off their success calling out Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) and his longtime failure to support immigration reform, Cesar Vargas and the crew at DRM Capitol Group are now going after Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL).  Teaming up with Alabama DREAMer Victor Palafox, Palafox and Vargas are taking to Sessions’ home state paper (the largest online [...]
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04/30/13 Cross-posted at Left in Alabama: Yesterday, the Supreme Court of the United States rejected Alabama’s appeal to consider the state’s 2011 “show me your papers” anti-immigration law, formally known as HB 56.  As a refresher, Alabama’s anti-immigrant law made international news for its Draconian “self-deportation” provisions, including targeting the immigration status of schoolchildren. From a [...]
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04/29/13 Cross-posted at Left in Alabama A lower court’s ruling striking down most of Alabama’s HB 56 law will stand, we learned when the Supreme Court announced it would not not hear the state’s appeal to revive its worst-in-the-nation anti-immigrant law. It was two years ago that Alabama passed HB 56, a horribly strict “self-deportation” law that chased immigrants out [...]
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04/26/13 Cross-posted at Daily Kos. This was a big week in anti-immigrant ranting for Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions (R-AL), the leader of the “Gang of Hate.” It’s becoming more and more clear that Sessions is on a mission to defeat immigration reform. You might even call it an obsession. At the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing earlier [...]
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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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04/18/13 The Senate Gang of Eight, Senators Michael Bennet (D-CO), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Jeff Flake (R-AZ), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), John McCain (R-AZ), Bob Menendez (D-NJ), Marco Rubio (R-FL), and Chuck Schumer (D-NY), will host a press conference this afternoon at 2:30 to discuss their newly introduced immigration legislation.  The Gang of Eight bill is a strong [...]
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04/18/13 Yesterday, the Senate Gang of 8 introduced its long-awaited bipartisan immigration bill. Tomorrow, the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold its first hearing on the bill, with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. The hearing will probably double as our first chance to see the anti-immigrant “Gang of Hate” in action on the Senate bill. [...]
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04/18/13 If you caught the buzz about the “Marcophone” yesterday—the false story about how the Senate immigration reform bill would grant undocumented immigrants a free cell phone—you can thank our favorite Gang of 8 member, Sen. Jeff Sessions. We like to call it WWJD—What WOULDN’T Jeff Do to try and sink immigration reform?  This week alone, [...]
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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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04/16/13 Over the weekend, the notoriously anti-immigrant Senator from Alabama, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions (R), appeared on ABC’s “This Week” to assert his role as the leading opponent of the Senate bipartisan reform bill. As Think Progress noted, the main thrust of Sessions’ economic claim wasn’t even true – and was debunked by conservative columnist George Will [...]
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04/04/13 Yesterday, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Joey Kennedy took a whack at Senator Jeff Sessions for trying to stall immigration reform in their home state* newspaper, with a column entitled “Do Nothing? Now that’s something Sen. Jeff Sessions can do.” As Kennedy writes: I guess it makes sense that U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama would join [...]
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04/02/13 Yesterday, TPM’s Benjy Sarlin took a closer look at Senator Marco Rubio’s latest delaying tactic on immigration: You’d expect Sen. Marco Rubio to be elated by the news over the weekend that labor and business groups reached a deal on a guest worker program, given that he’d identified their slow progress as one of the [...]
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03/27/13 Last week we wrote about a letter that six anti-immigrant Senators sent to Chairman of the Judiciary Committee Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT).  The Senators, out to stall and eventually kill immigration reform, complained that the legislative process was moving too quickly and requested more time to hold more hearings, debate the issue, so on, so [...]
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