Video:HotAirinterviewwithMarcoRubioon

Video: Hot Air interview with Marco Rubio on border crisis, Hobby Lobby

posted at 8:01 am on July 10, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

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Yesterday afternoon, Senator Marco Rubio spoke with me for a brief interview about immigration and the border crisis, as well as some brief remarks on the repercussions of the Hobby Lobby decision on Capitol Hill. I started off asking what Rubio, a partner to Democrats on the stalled comprehensive immigration reform bill, has been hearing from the White House on the latest border crisis. “They’re not communicating much,” Rubio told me, “other than what you’re hearing in the press — certainly not to me.” The present crisis arose in Honduras and to a lesser extent in El Salvador and Guatemala that the US would not kick out children as long as they got here by August of this year. Some of it is just rumors, Rubio says, but “some of that, I think, is the result of more deferred action,” as well as aggressive tactics by traffickers. That’s pretty easy to do, too, because the economic conditions in those areas are pretty desperate already.

What this demonstrates, Rubio argues, is that the claims from the Obama administration that the border is already secure are simply false. “As it turns out, and as we’ve been saying,” Rubio told me, “at least three sectors of our southern border are not secured. So in fact, people are able to cross.” Thanks to the existing laws on the books, the border crossers know to turn themselves into authorities if they have relatives already in the US, because the Department of Homeland Security will release them into the custody of the families.  “It’s amazing, because about two years ago,” Rubio reminds us, “the President went down to El Paso, gave a big speech at the border, where he said [that] the border is secure — and these Republicans that are asking for more, the next thing they’re going to want is a moat, and then a moat with alligators, kind of mocking everybody.”

I asked what all this means for border security and immigration reform. Rubio said it underscores the need for a borders-first process, including a modernized system for legal immigration and enforced employer verification to end the “magnets” that incentivizes illegal immigration. “Until people believe that that this problem is not just under control but actually getting better,” Rubio emphasized, “they’re not going to be willing to talk about anything else when it comes to immigration, and you will never have the votes in Congress to do anything about the problem until you deal with that first.”

Addressing the issue of those already in the country long before this new border crisis is out of the question until those conditions are fully satisfied, Rubio said. “I don’t even think you can begin to have that conversation, much less have the votes for it, until you’ve dealt with part one and part two,” meaning the issues of full border security and the modernization of legal immigration and employer verification.

That brings us to the $3.7 billion funding request from Barack Obama, which Rubio says is mainly a non-sequitur to the crisis. “Very little of it is for actual improvements on the border,” Rubio explained. “There’s even money in there to deal with wildfires, things of that nature.”  Some of the funding is necessary for humane care of those being held, reflecting the compassion which Rubio said is part of the American value system, but under current law and the reform package passed by the Senate last year, all of these current detainees would have to be sent home fairly immediately. “If you don’t enforce the law,” Rubio said in agreement with Governor Rick Perry’s comments yesterday, “you are creating an incentive for people to try to come here [illegally].”

On the Hobby Lobby, Rubio’s not sure how serious the effort will be to pass a bill amending the RFRA to restrict religious expression and force business owners to comply. “I have no idea what the prospects are,” Rubio responded, joking that “Harry Reid doesn’t share that information.” He also noted the widely varying reactions to Supreme Court decisions from Democrats, who jeered at ObamaCare critics after the 5-4 decision that upheld by saying that “it’s the law of the land!” It’s a little different reaction when they lose, Rubio pointed out. I also asked about the status of the repeal-and-replace effort for ObamaCare overall, and Rubio replied that Republicans still haven’t settled on one replacement proposal, but that he “expects that we will file” a proposal relatively soon. “Put consumers in charge of health insurance,” Rubio urged in his conclusion, “not lobbyists, not hospitals, not health care industries, and certainly not government.”

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Tags: Barack Obama, border security, crisis, Hobby Lobby, immigration reform, Marco Rubio, ObamaCare

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TexasDemslamsObamaadministrationoverborderrush

Texas Dem slams Obama administration over border rush

posted at 12:01 pm on July 7, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

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How bad has the situation at the border become? CBS News has begun pointing out that a flood of thousands of refugees across a border isn’t just a humanitarian crisis, it’s a potential national-security crisis, too. On top of that, even Democrats are now openly criticizing the lack of preparedness and enforcement from the Obama administration on the border — or at least one Texas Democrat:

While lawmakers harp over potential military action to stem escalating sectarian bloodletting at the hands of an al Qaeda-inspired insurgency movement in Iraq and Syria, another issue on the national security front has surfaced after lurking for years in the bowels of U.S. foreign policy concerns: the staggering influx of undocumented minors at the U.S.-Mexico line.

Indeed, experts agree, Central Americans who are deluging the southern border with tens of thousands of their children are breeding not only a humanitarian crisis, but a serious national security threat to the United States.

“We should certainly consider this surge of drugs and weapons and, now, these kids, to be a national security issue,” W. Ralph Basham – U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) commissioner from 2006 to 2009 and now a founding partner of the Command Consulting Group – told CBS News.

Basham echoed recent comments from Marine Corps Gen. John Kelly, the head of the U.S. Southern Command who’s headed to Guatemala this week with Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson to talk to officials about the issue. Kelly argued that in the grand scheme of protecting the U.S. border, the resources allocated him have been unrealistically inadequate to curb the flow of migrants out of Central American countries like Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, where amid thriving crime and poverty, a growing number of parents have dispatched their children to the United States in a blind shot at a better future.

“In comparison to other global threats, the near collapse of societies in the hemisphere with the associated drug and [undocumented immigrant] flow are frequently viewed to be of low importance,” Kelly told Defense One over the weekend.

“Many argue these threats are not existential and do not challenge our national security; I disagree.”

Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX) told CNN’s Candy Crowley that the Obama administration should have seen this coming “a long time ago,” in response to Crowley’s question about the extra $2 billion Barack Obama requested to deal with the crisis:

John Fund says this should be “a slap in the face” to both political parties, even as Obama declines to visit the border himself during an upcoming visit to Texas:

White House spokesman Josh Earnest bizarrely says that people criticizing Obama’s failure to visit the border would “rather play politics than actually try to address some of these challenges.” The president, it seems, will “lead from behind” once again. All this has been too much for Representative Henry Cuellar, a Democrat who represents the border city of Laredo. “They should have seen this coming a long time ago . . . because we saw those numbers increasing,” he said today on CNN’s State of the Union. Cuellar admitted that our current system creates perverse incentives. “There is an incentive that if you bring your child over here, or you’re a child by yourself, you’re going to be let go. And that’s exactly what’s happening,” he said. “Our immigration courts are so backlogged. There’s not enough detention spaces. . . . This is the incentive we have to take away.” As for Obama’s pledge to send more personnel to the border, Cuellar didn’t sound confident: “I think he’s still one step behind. They knew this was happening a year ago. . . . and they are not reacting fast enough at this time.”

The crisis at the border should serve as a slap in the face to people in both parties who have been unable to come up with a border solution for the last decade. On the one hand, Democrats’ insistence that any reform must be “comprehensive” and include a path to citizenship ignores the fact that for most migrants, becoming a citizen is not a first-tier priority. The Pew Research Center found last year that of the 5.4 million Mexican immigrants who reside legally in the U.S. today, only 36 percent have chosen to become citizens. Safety, the ability to visit family and friends in Mexico and return, and being able to live openly in society are far more important to immigrants. For their part, many Republicans who insist on an enforcement-only approach ignore the evidence that the 45-year-old “War on Drugs” has done little to stem drug trafficking on the border despite an increase of more than 50 percent in Border Patrol funding over the last six years.

Border Patrol agents I spoke with were reluctant to be quoted on the record, but all agreed that a comprehensive solution that combines better border enforcement (which entails less-political enforcement) with a well-designed guest-worker program is necessary if we wish to make real progress.

If anything, this latest crisis shows the need to strengthen border security effectively as a separate effort before addressing normalization of the resident aliens living illegally in the US already. It’s been nine years since the 9/11 Commission highlighted the national-security implications of the ineffective security at the southern border, and Congress has yet to act.  Republicans for the most part have taken a borders-first approach, even agreeing to comprehensive reform as long as verifiable border security comes first before any other steps get taken. Obama and Democrats have insisted that the border is already secure and Republicans have just been scaremongering in order to delay comprehensive reform.

This crisis shows beyond doubt that Republicans have been correct, and that Congress needs to act before the situation truly becomes “existential,” as General Kelly warns.

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Tags: Barack Obama, border security, General John Kelly, Henry Cuellar, immigration reform, Mexico, Texas

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RickPerrygetsascoldingforsayingObama

Rick Perry gets a scolding for saying Obama doesn’t want to do anything about border security

posted at 12:31 pm on July 6, 2014 by Noah Rothman

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Texas Gov. Rick Perry has some nerve. He had the gall to assert in an appearance on ABC’s This Week that the virtual refugee crisis on America’s southern border is not simply a legal problem but a problem of border security. Moreover, Perry seemed to be getting the tinfoil hat treatment when he stood by his claim that the White House doesn’t seem to mind this crisis all that much.

Perry began his contentious interview about border security with ABC’s Martha Raddatz by outlining the multiple petitions he sent Washington seeking redress for the issue of unaccompanied minors crossing the border illegally.

Perry insisted, while conceding that Texas currently has seven border patrol agents per mile, it is not enough.

“This is about a law,” Raddatz pushed back. “This isn’t necessarily about border patrol, this is about a law.” She noted that migrant children from non-contiguous nations, like Honduras and El Salvador, must be taken into the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services in order to comply with a law which George W. Bush signed in 2008 and which Barack Obama is seeking to amend.

Perry didn’t take the bait. “The rule of law is that the Constitution requires the United States to secure the border,” he said.

Raddatz pressed. “Isn’t this a backlog in the courts,” she asked. “Doesn’t that have to be addressed first?”

It does seem self-evidently true that the law protecting migrant children would not come into play if those migrant children were unable to pierce America’s border security so easily. This point did not get a thorough parsing, however, because Perry committed a cardinal sin in the next breath when he suggested that malicious negligence on Obama’s part was at play.

“I don’t believe he particularly cares whether or not the border of the United States is secure,” Perry claimed.

“He’s telling people not to come,” Raddatz interjected. “He’s telling them in ads not to come into the United States.”

“About five years too late,” Perry laughed.

Things began to get tense when Raddatz asked Perry to answer for comments he made on Fox News suggesting there is what she characterized as a “conspiracy” to allow illegal immigrants to enter the U.S.

“They either are inept or don’t care,” the Texas governor insisted.

Raddatz is a strong interviewer, host, and moderator, and the adversarial approach should be applied to both Democrats and Republicans. Perry got a good grilling here, and that serves the audience far better than the accommodating lines of questioning and profile packages which sometimes must suffice for hard-hitting Sunday morning programming.

This was, however, an odd line of questioning to adopt that aggressive posture. The desperate Nicaraguan parents who endeavor to undertake the journey to the United States are not aware of the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008. Even if they are, it is just one of a handful of incentives which keep immigrants flooding over the border. The circumstances these immigrants are escaping are all the incentive they need to make the journey north.

Some say that is an argument for immigration reform, and it is. It is also an argument for increased border security – security which cannot be thwarted by, as the documentarian Alexandra Pelosi documented, tools as simple as a ladder.

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Tags: immigration reform, Martha Raddatz, Rick Perry

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DidCantorreallylosebecauseofimmigration?

Did Cantor really lose because of immigration?

posted at 11:31 am on June 11, 2014 by Allahpundit

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Better question: Does it matter? His defeat’s being received by the powers that be as a referendum on amnesty; no one thinks the prospects for immigration reform are the same as they were 24 hours ago, despite the White House’s lame effort to spin the Graham/Cantor outcomes as a, er, win for reformers. As such, there’s a “Keynesian beauty contest” element to all this. Whatever the real reason is for why Cantor lost, the reason accepted by the crowd on the Hill is immigration. That’s what matters. Wonderful news for border hawks.

But let’s stick with the question, just for funsies. Did amnesty do him in? Some smart observers think there’s more to it than that. Erick Erickson:

Cantor’s constituent services moved more toward focusing on running the Republican House majority than his congressional district. K Street, the den of Washington lobbyists, became his chief constituency. In Virginia a couple of months ago, several residents of Cantor’s district groused that they were going to support Brat because they did not think Cantor was doing his job as a Virginia congressman. Others no longer trusted him.

Cantor and his staff both lost the trust of conservatives and constituents. They broke promises, made bad deals, and left many feeling very, very betrayed. Much of it was because of Cantor’s hubris and the arrogance of his top staffers. He could not be touched and he could not be defeated. He knew it and they knew it. He kept his attention off his district, constituents, and conservatives while he and his staff plotted to get the Speaker’s chair.

A lefty strategist made the same point:

“Was immigration an issue? Yes. Was it the deciding factor to the tune of 11%? Not no, hell no. It’s a fairy tale,” Virginia Democratic strategist Dave “Mudcat” Saunders said. “People talk. And they talk about Eric Cantor. ‘Where is he?’ His constituent services suck. He was never in the district. And when he was in the district and he went out, he had a [security] entourage with him. He was out gallivanting all over the country being a big deal and this is a lesson.”

Dave Brat hammered Cantor on the trail for being an insider too. Casual observers like me only noticed his amnesty rhetoric, but the Wall Street/Main Street divide was a key part of his pitch. He ran a full-spectrum populist campaign, packed with attacks on Cantor for being too chummy with lobbyists and assorted other cronies. In fact, as Ed noted earlier, a PPP poll of voters in Cantor’s district yesterday found overwhelmingly support for comprehensive immigration reform — even among Republicans:

About 72 percent of registered voters in Cantor’s district polled on Tuesday said they either “strongly” or “somewhat” support immigration reform that would secure the borders, block employers from hiring those here illegally, and allow undocumented residents without criminal backgrounds to gain legal status – three key tenets of an overhaul, according to a poll by the left-leaning firm Public Policy Polling and commissioned by the liberal advocacy group Americans United for Change.

Looking just at Republicans in Cantor’s district, the poll found that 70 percent of GOP registered voters would support such a plan, while 27 percent would oppose.

Meanwhile, Cantor was deeply unpopular in his district, the PPP poll found. About 63 percent of those surveyed in his district said they did not approve of the job Cantor has been doing, with 30 percent of registered voters approving. Among Republicans, 43 percent approved of Cantor’s job performance, while 49 percent disapproved, the survey found.

Polling immigration reform is always, shall we say, problematic, but I think you can square PPP’s data with Brat’s win. The majority of local Republicans might mildly support a grand bargain on amnesty, but on hot-button issues like this, it’s the opponents who have the turnout muscle. Same with guns, of course. The public supports expanded background checks overwhelmingly but few House Republicans would dare back it for fear of being swamped by gun-rights enthusiasts at the polls in their district. My theory, then, cliche though it may be, is that Cantor got swept away by a perfect storm. He was too disengaged with his district and had been for years; he employed a poor campaign strategy that ended up inadvertently elevating Brat; he faced soul-deep disgust among voters, especially tea partiers, with the Washington status quo, which the House majority leader inevitably embodies to some extent; and, yes, his chatter about DREAMers triggered conservative outrage at House Republicans’ endless flirtation with amnesty and the deceit they often employ to shield themselves from criticism. Cantor actually tried to sell himself in the primary as some sort of immovable object blocking the path to amnesty, a lie that pro-amnesty fanatic Luis Gutierrez was happy to support in the name of protecting Cantor. I’d like to think righties turned out in droves for Brat for that reason too, to send a message to Boehner, Rubio, and the rest that it’s time to stop farking lying about their intentions on immigration already.

And yet, and yet, if that was all that Cantor was up against, I think it would have been a close race. Brat still might have won but not by double digits. What turned this into a rout, I suspect, was the news over the past few weeks — loudly trumpeted by Drudge, Breitbart, and conservative talk radio — about young illegals from Central America crossing en masse over the Texas border. That was the rocket fuel, I’ll bet, that convinced even casual GOP amnesty skeptics in the district that Cantor’s and Obama’s efforts to legalize DREAMers were acting as a magnet at the border. If I were a voter in the district, I would have taken that news as smoking-gun proof that Brat was right and that sending Cantor back to the House would only make that magnet stronger and bigger. Via Breitbart, here’s Chuck Todd making the same point. That’s what turned this from a momentous upset into the surprise landslide of the century.

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Tags: amnesty, cantor, dave brat, dream, house, illegals, immigration, immigration reform, Virginia

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Biden:TheUnitedStatesistheworld’sonly

Biden: The United States is the world’s only non-xenophobic major economy, you know

posted at 8:01 pm on June 10, 2014 by Erika Johnsen

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It took me a moment to figure out what Biden was attempting to say here, but I think I have it: In trying to make the argument for moving forward with immigration reform in front of the National Association of Manufacturers, he made the point that America should be actively trying to attract skilled immigrants in order to “keep our edge” in the international industrial scene — but… very, very badly. Birth rates in countries like Germany, Japan, and China have leveled off, he noted, even reaching the point where they are below the population replacement rate. Partially to address this problem, he offered, Japan is trying to keep more women in the workforce — but only because they’re so “xenophobically” averse to welcoming immigrants that they have left themselves with no other option? And we should take advantage of that by enacting immigration reform? I think? That got weird.

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Tags: economy, gaffe, immigration, immigration reform, industry, Joe Biden, manufacturing

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Cantorwon’truleoutfloorvoteonbill

Cantor won’t rule out floor vote on bill that would let DREAMers enlist in military

posted at 2:41 pm on May 22, 2014 by Allahpundit

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Last week, to appease the border hawks who are making him sweat in his primary race, he ruled out adding the ENLIST Act as an amendment to the big defense bill that the House will be voting on soon. That was curious because it’s common knowledge that Cantor supports ENLIST. If you want to enact it, what better way than to attach it to important legislation that’s guaranteed to pass in order to keep the Pentagon funded? Cantor offered no explanation for his change of heart, but I’m going to go ahead and be cynical by assuming that that primary race and those border hawks had something to do with it.

So that’s the end of ENLIST, right? Not quite:

In an interview with POLITICO, Cantor said he backs the policy merits of the legislation from Rep. Jeff Denham (R-Calif.), which would give a path to legal permanent residency for immigrants who came to the U.S. illegally as children.

“If you’ve got a kid that was brought here by their parents — unbeknownst to the child — and that they’ve grown up in this country and not known any other, and they want to serve in our military, they ought to be allowed to do that and then have the ability to become a citizen after that kind of service,” Cantor said a brief interview Wednesday evening…

Cantor, who controls the floor schedule, did not rule out a potential standalone vote on the ENLIST Act later this year, saying that the lawmakers involved with the bill are “still working on language” and that “no decisions have been made” on potential floor action…

Liberal activists convened a conference call earlier Wednesday to slam Cantor over immigration. “Eric Cantor is the No. 1 guy standing between the American people and immigration reform,” Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice, said on the call, according to the Associated Press.

Translation: Sure, ENLIST is still on the table — just as soon as Cantor’s primary is over and he’s out of danger. That’s why ENLIST is being kept out of the defense bill, not because of any policy or procedural issue but because keeping it live and in play over the last few weeks of the campaign could give Cantor’s challenger, Dave Brat, a shot. Once Cantor and other House Republicans are past the primaries in June, it’s full speed ahead on immigration reform. In fact, Haley Barbour assured HuffPo today that Boehner really is committed to passing something but that “they don’t have the votes today” — emphasis, I suspect, on “today.” Check back in a month, after grassroots conservatives have duly re-nominated all of these guys for another two years, and see if he has the votes then.

ENLIST is actually a (no pun intended) dream vehicle for the GOP to make something happen this year on immigration. If Boehner takes the caucus’s temperature and finds that they’re willing to bite the bullet on comprehensive amnesty, he could pass ENLIST during the lame-duck session, go to conference with the Senate in it, quietly agree with Reid and Schumer to expand ENLIST so that it includes amnesty measures for a broader class of illegals, and then pass that in the House. If, on the other hand, he gets the sense from the caucus that they’ll only tolerate a small immigration measure right now in the name of PR and outreach to Latinos, ENLIST would be perfect, giving sympathetic DREAMers a chance to earn their citizenship by serving in the armed forces. Would Reid and Schumer agree to a standalone ENLIST bill, though? If you’re a Democrat hellbent on comprehensive reform, it’s mighty risky to let Republicans pass a small measure like ENLIST: The GOP might turn around afterward, having (somewhat) achieved its goal of proving its good faith on reform, and decide that they’re not going to pass anything else on amnesty for the rest of Obama’s term. That’s a worst-case scenario for Dems, since it would leave only a small portion of illegals on the citizenship track while giving Republicans something to point to and crow about the next time they’re challenged as do-nothings on amnesty. On the other hand, if Reid and Schumer declare that ENLIST is dead in the Senate, then suddenly they’re the ones who are blocking immigration reform. What’s their play here?

While you mull that over, here’s House conservative Jeb Hensarling giving Boehner and Cantor something to think about by refusing to rule out a run for Speaker next year. Hmmmmm.

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Tags: act, cantor, denham, dream, enlist, immigration reform, military

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Killingtheruleoflawsoftlyonimmigration

Killing the rule of law softly on immigration

posted at 4:31 pm on March 29, 2014 by Jazz Shaw

At the Corner, Mark Krikorian catches John Sandweg (previously of Immigration and Customs Enforcement) in the act of putting forward proposals which would effectively eliminate his own former job.

Sandweg, a criminal defense attorney and Arizona crony of Janet Napolitano, wrote in relation to President Obama’s directive that ICE reexamine enforcement policies with an eye toward making them more “humane.” To that end, he says ICE “should eliminate ‘non-criminal re-entrants and immigration fugitives’ as a priority category for deportation.”

What that means is that people who have been formally deported and then sneak back in should be exempted from further attempts at removing them, even though re-entry after deportation is a felony. Also, he wants to exempt from deportation the hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens who have been ordered deported but ignored the order and simply absconded. He says, in the obligatory “to be sure” paragraph, “To be sure, those who repeatedly cross our borders illegally or abscond from the immigration court bear culpability” — but if they’re exempt from being taken into custody and removed from the country, what does that culpability mean? It’s not like they’re going to be prosecuted, even though reentry after deportation and absconding from court are both criminal offenses.

He’s not just blue-skying this idea; it’s clearly the next step being considered in the administration’s unilateral amnesty push. It wouldn’t confer legal status on any illegal aliens (unlike the president’s illegal DACA/DREAM amnesty) but would solidify the status of immigration violations as secondary offenses. An example of a secondary offense is not wearing your seatbelt (in many states, anyway) — the police can’t stop you just for that, but if they stop you for, say, speeding, and find you’re also not wearing your seatbelt, they can ticket you for that as well.

Sandweg’s editorial may be found here.

This is yet another layer of the onion which makes any rational discussion of immigration policy essentially futile when attempting to deal with the pro-amnesty crowd. More than a year ago, I raised the question of whether the Democrats and their pro-amnesty allies would be willing to settle the issue once and for all as to whether or not illegal immigration was a crime. It seemed to me that until you could answer that fundamental question, there was really no path forward to discuss anything else. Clearly, I was mistaken.

Sandweg highlight’s something which is already going on to some extent in the Justice Department and could clearly be taken much further. If you can’t gain any ground in getting the Legislative branch to decriminalize entry by illegal aliens, apparently you can just leave the current laws on the books but fail to enforce them. Or, on a related note, treat the crime as such an afterthought that there is no longer any disincentive to violating the law.

That leads us to the larger question – one which has been debated over a number of presidencies. At what point does a government divided into three ostensibly equal branches break down in effectiveness if they refuse to play their part in the overall contract? What does the Supreme Court do if it issues a ruling but can find no strong arm to enforce its decision? What recourse does the Legislative branch have if the duly elected members pass laws, but the judicial wing of the Executive fails to hold violators to account? It seems that this particular dodge exposes the reality that the White House has much stronger cards to play if the three branches come into conflict.

We’ll close with one of Krikorian’s observations on the subject.

This administration is engaged in executive nullification on a scale that threatens the constitutional order. Rather than trying to bamboozle voters into accepting an amnesty, the Republican leadership should be devoting itself to soberly and calmly making the case to the public that this administration is setting precedents that our children will come to regret.

And probably sooner rather than later.

Tags: Barack Obama, Eric Holder, illegal immigration, immigration reform, rule of law

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Amilitarypathtocitizenship?Notsofast.

A military path to citizenship? Not so fast.

posted at 8:31 am on February 8, 2014 by Jazz Shaw

Another day, another poll on immigration reform… and one which probably proves what Allahpundit was saying yesterday regarding the need to examine how the questions are phrased. As was demonstrated, you can get a (bare) majority of people to support some form of broad immigration reform (amnesty) if you offer them a choice between mass deportation and a path to citizenship for those illegals who “have jobs.” Rasmussen has a new set of numbers which flip parts of the previous poll on its head while opening up a whole new can of worms.

Voters continue to put tougher border control well ahead of creating a pathway to citizenship for most illegal immigrants, but they‘re all for citizenship for children brought here illegally who are succeeding in America. Most also see citizenship as an effective recruiting tool for the military.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 80% of Likely U.S. Voters believe a child who is brought here illegally but later earns a college degree or serves honorably in the military should be given a chance to obtain U.S. citizenship. Just 10% disagree, while 10% are not sure.

First of all, their phrasing of the question regarding border security vs a path to citizenship is clearly different. And American respondents answered differently in kind, finding a secure border preferable to a gift to those living here illegally. But it’s the second question which was even more interesting. There is clearly a more sympathetic tone across the nation for offering some citizenship advantages to those who have managed to somehow earn it in our collective opinions. But how do they merit this generosity? 80% – which is a huge margin – are in favor if the illegal immigrant has either “earned a college degree” or served our nation in uniform.

Why would you group those two together? It seems to me that if there are to be any head of the line privileges being handed out, they would be far more likely to go to those who have taken the oath, put on the uniform, taken up arms and served a tour in combat defending the nation. Compare that to those who were living here illegally, received possible scholarships or grants and blended in at college with the children of citizens to obtain a degree and a pathway to a top notch job. I’d guess that the former would be far, far more popular in terms of special treatment than the latter. Let’s split those two groups out and run the poll.

And finally, how is the process working for immigrants to get into the military in the first place? Granted, once they are in and have served the nation honorably on the field of battle, even I find myself thinking… yeah.. I can see putting them up toward the head of the line. I’d be shocked if many people wouldn’t give this group a bit more credit than any other subset of those seeking citizenship. But aren’t we screening our applicants to join the military a bit more closely than that and finding which ones are completely outside the system? You can be rejected for all sorts of criminal convictions before being allowed on the bus to boot camp. Are we just not checking closely enough or is there some sort of loophole to allow illegals to join? It would appear that there is not.

A non-citizen must meet certain requirements to be eligible to join the military. The must have an Alien Registration Receipt Card (stamped I-94 or I-551 Green card/INS Form 1-551) as well as a bona fide residence established with an established record of the U.S. as their home. If the non-citizens comes from countries with a reputation of hostility towards the U.S, they may require a waiver. The federal government cannot petition on behalf of an illegal immigrant so that they can obtain legal status and be able to enlist in the military. In order for an immigrant to join the United States military, they must first go through the immigration process of the USCIS (previously known as the INS) and then begin the enlisting process. Another requirement is that the Green Card and/or visa of the immigrant desiring to join the military must be valid for the entire period of their enlistment. Undocumented immigrants may not enlist in the U.S. military.

So if an illegal immigrant gets into the military, they must have done so surreptitiously and in violation of the law. If we were only talking about men and women with legal green card status joining and perhaps getting a bump up toward the head of the line for full citizenship, I’m pretty much in favor of it. If you were already in the legal pipeline and made that sort of sacrifice, it’s worth giving you some benefit on the back end. But if you lied about your status to join and were actually in the country illegally, then you were committing yet another crime (fraud?) when you signed up to enlist. I’m not seeing how this gives you a pass to a green card.

But perhaps I’m wrong here. What do you think? If they join and serve honorably, should they just get a green card by default?

Tags: illegal immigration, immigration reform, military

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Iknow…let’sforgetaboutObamacareandstart

I know… let’s forget about Obamacare and start a big immigration reform fight!

posted at 12:31 pm on February 2, 2014 by Jazz Shaw

Allahpundit brought up the waffling issue, demonstrating that this isn’t anywhere near a done deal yet, but the continuing trend seems to be Republicans marching out on camera to talk about working on a “comprehensive” immigration reform plan. This is more than a little disappointing on a couple of levels. There have already been some sacrifices made to keep the train on the tracks which have gotten the blood of many conservatives boiling. Avoiding a bloodbath on the debt ceiling and the budget deal was a big give, but it kept the focus on Obamacare (an issue where Republicans are finally winning and looking to knock several Senate seats back into the red column.) In terms of media wars, if we can get the Christie bridge story off the front page one way or the other, things should settle back into the long predicted train wreck taking place before everyone’s eyes. And yet… well, I’ll let Andrew McCarthy explain.

Now, with the Obamacare debacle getting worse by the day and teeing up as the defining issue of the 2014 midterm elections, Republican leadership has decided this is the perfect time to roll out an immigration-reform proposal (i) that has nothing to do with Obamacare and is certain to detract attention from its failure; (ii) that fraudulently proclaims “enforcement first” while actually prioritizing legal status for law-breakers, thereby encouraging more law-breaking and ensuring that enforcement never happens; (iii) that depends for enforcement on a president who has demonstrated that he will not enforce the immigration laws; and (iv) that will be deeply offensive to the GOP’s already disgruntled conservative base, ensuring that droves of them will sit out the 2014 midterms.

McCarthy describes this as sheer genius with tongue planted firmly in cheek. I really don’t understand what Boehner is even debating. (Unless, of course, he actually has no intention of moving on any immigration bills and is just paying lip service to keep the media interested.) There’s not going to be comprehensive immigration Big Bill on the floor without his approval, so the solution in this case should be to simply do nothing. And isn’t that supposed to be the one thing Congress is good at anyway? For face saving purposes, a series of small bills which toughen border security (though that still looks like a finger in the leaking dike scenario), give employers the tools to verify the immigration status of applicants and significantly toughen penalties for those who hire illegals could pass the House. Then, when Harry Reid or Barack Obama try the you won’t work on immigration reform line, you just remind them that you’ve already sent three bills over awaiting their signature, followed by, so… how’s that Obamacare thing working out?

Will they have the discipline to stay on course or are we going to round up the circular firing squad again? Place your bets.

Tags: House Republicans, illegal immigration, immigration reform, John Boehner

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Obama:I’dacceptanimmigrationbillwithouta

Obama: I’d accept an immigration bill without a path to citizenship

posted at 9:21 am on January 31, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

Jake Tapper got an exclusive interview with Barack Obama for CNN, which will air today, but CNN is already teasing some of the highlights and a short exchange on jobs. More intriguing, however, is an apparent concession on immigration. Despite his years-long insistence on path to citizenship being part of any comprehensive reform package, Obama praised the Republican effort in the House and backed away from that demand:

The one area where Obama says he believes he can work with Republicans is on the subject of immigration and the path to citizenship, a cornerstone issue for Democrats.

The major sticking point between Democrats and Republicans will likely be whether or not the estimated 11 million undocumented workers in this country be given a path to citizenship. Obama refused to say whether he would veto a bill that did not contain such a provision; it is likely that House Republicans would not pass any bill that included a path to citizenship.

“I’m not going to prejudge what gets to my desk,” he said.

On Thursday, House Republicans released a one-page document that outlined what they called the standards of immigration reform, which calls for legal status, but not citizenship.

That’s not to say that he’s going to stop talking about the path to citizenship entirely, but it no longer sounds like a non-negotiable point:

“I think the principle that we don’t want two classes of people in America is a principle that a lot of people agree with, not just me and not just Democrats. But I am encouraged by what Speaker (John) Boehner has said,” Obama said.

“… I genuinely believe that Speaker Boehner and a number of House Republicans, folks like Paul Ryan, really do want to get a serious immigration reform bill done. And keep in mind that the Senate bill and the legislation that I’ve supported already calls for a very long process of earning citizenship. You had to pay fines. You had to learn English. You had to pay back taxes. And you had to go to the back of the line. And at the end of that, you could get citizenship.”

The “I’m not going to prejudge what gets to my desk” line is silly. All Presidents pre-judge bills before they get to desks, and they usually take steps to prevent bills they dislike from getting there. The inboxes of journalists are filled with White House statements on bills that haven’t even come up for a vote, threatening vetoes if they pass (or expressing presidential support for the bills they like). If Obama wanted to stick to his guns on the path to citizenship, he’d make that clear now.

Obama actually has a point about creating classes of residents through bans on citizenship. As Allahpundit and Greg Sargent noted yesterday, though, we’re not talking about bans, but the elimination of a special process for the currently illegal. Obama’s earlier insistence on special paths to citizenship created its own class of people who were both illegal and had an inside track to citizenship through regularization. We already have a path to citizenship called “naturalization,” and there’s no reason to create a fast-track path for others who entered illegally. In that sense, the GOP statement makes more sense than previous proposals, and doesn’t put the currently illegal in front of those who are already waiting for naturalization.

It still moves them ahead for legal residency over those waiting to enter, though, no matter how one parses it. That would be worthwhile if — and this is a huge if — we actually secure the borders through proven and verifiable barrier technology and other efforts and overhaul the visa system to track people accurately when they overstay or otherwise violate the applicable terms. A deal which doesn’t deliver that should be rejected out of hand. Period.

As for the timing, Allahpundit wondered why the GOP didn’t just do this last year to allow the anger from grassroots groups to die off before the election. I suspect that the timing was to make sure that opposition to comprehensive immigration reform didn’t generate funding for primary challengers early enough in the cycle to become serious threats by the spring of 2014. But then again, I’m cynical that way — even if I do think that a swap of regularization for true border security and visa-system overhaul is a good deal that benefits national security much more than it damages anything else.

Here’s a glimpse of the interview with Tapper, which talks more about jobs than immigration. Note that the unspoken context of the discussion of the chronically unemployed is the failure of the big-government intervention of the stimulus, as Obama talks about … more big-government intervention.

Tags: Barack Obama, immigration reform, Jake Tapper, path to citizenship

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California grants right for illegal immigrant to be a lawyer

Californiagrantsrightforillegalimmigranttobe

ImmigrationreformdeadintheHousefor2013?

Immigration reform dead in the House for 2013?

posted at 2:01 pm on October 25, 2013 by Ed Morrissey

Have Republicans in the House decided not to self-destruct a second time in a month? At least according to Politico, the answer is yes. Rather than open another painful split on immigration reform, the House will close out the 2013 session without any votes on the issue:

House Republican leadership has no plans to vote on any immigration reform legislation before the end the year.

The House has just 19 days in session before the end of 2013, and there are a number of reasons why immigration reform is stalled this year.

Following the fiscal battles last month, the internal political dynamics are tenuous within the House Republican Conference. A growing chorus of GOP lawmakers and aides are intensely skeptical that any of the party’s preferred piecemeal immigration bills can garner the support 217 Republicans — they would need that if Democrats didn’t lend their votes. Republican leadership doesn’t see anyone coalescing around a single plan, according to sources across GOP leadership. Leadership also says skepticism of President Barack Obama within the House Republican Conference is at a high, and that’s fueled a desire to stay out of a negotiating process with the Senate. Republicans fear getting jammed. …

“After Obama poisoned the well in the fiscal showdown and [House Minority Leader Nancy] Pelosi now is actively trying to use immigration as a political weapon, the chances for substantive reforms, unfortunately, seem all but gone,” said one GOP operative involved in the conservative pro-immigration movement.

Well, that’ll be news to Darrell Issa, but it also makes some sense. First, Republican nerves are still raw from the shutdown fight that split the House and Senate caucuses, and split both caucuses internally as well.  The last thing Republicans need is another civil war immediately on the heels of the last one, which has quieted down but hasn’t entirely evaporated.

Postponing the effort may end up killing it altogether. They can push it into 2014 after tempers have cooled, but that’s getting close to the midterm elections.  Conservatives might be able to convince the rest of the caucus that it will better to wait to see if the GOP can win control of the Senate in order to get a better deal on border security for reforms in 2015, avoiding another show of disunity that President Obama can exploit to save Democratic control in the upper chamber.  If nothing else, that might have the Senate offer more concessions as a way to get the House to move.  If the House does nothing through 2014, then the Senate bill will expire and the effort will have to begin again from scratch.

An even better argument for waiting it out is the ObamaCare debacle.  Obama wants to distract from the destruction that his signature program is wreaking on Americans and their insurance by “pivoting” to immigration. (As an aside — does anyone remember the 37th “pivot” to jobs and the economy?  Good times, good times.) Republicans should spend this time debating an eventual replacement for ObamaCare to address the real financial emergency Obama’s program is creating for Americans, one that robustly addresses the cost spiral of health care with market-based reforms that work rather than government mandates that make the situation exponentially worse. The chances of substantive reforms in this policy area are very good — and the electorate will be very receptive to them by the time they’ve paid through the nose for Obama’s idea of reform all year long.

This is the perfect opportunity to show that the GOP can govern seriously and solve the problems created by an incompetent Democratic administration. Let’s hope Republicans grasp it.

Tags: health care, House Republicans, immigration reform, ObamaCare

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Source from: hotair