The House Of Representatives Members Most Likely To Back Immigration Reform

Huff Post

Elise Foley  &

Aaron Bycoffe

Posted: 07/09/13 EDT

WASHINGTON — As the immigration reform debate begins in earnest in the House, one of the biggest issues is the math. The bill needs 218 votes to pass. Democratic leaders said they think they can convince most of their party’s 201 members to vote in favor. That means they’d need around 20 Republicans to join them. But House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has repeatedly insisted he will only allow the House to vote on an immigration reform plan if a majority of Republicans support it.

That would mean finding about 120 Republicans willing to back a plan that includes a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, which former GOP leadership aides said is almost impossible. Somewhere between 50 and 80 is a more realistic number, they said — which means a potentially overwhelming majority of House members in favor of reform.

If it becomes clear that the House has far more votes than needed to pass comprehensive immigration reform, the pressure on Boehner to “let the House work its will,” as he’s fond of saying, increases exponentially. That pressure may be the only way to get comprehensive immigration legislation through the House that includes a pathway to citizenship, along with border security and changes to legal immigration and enforcement policies.

HuffPost will be tracking support as the debate goes on. The following count is based on the combined intelligence of several immigration groups and informed House staffers, along with a look at lawmakers’ past votes, public statements and district demographics. It maps out which House members will either support immigration reform or, at the very least, remain quiet on it. If Boehner refuses, as he has said he will, to pass the bill without a majority of Republicans, below are the politicians reformers will try to win over, including some skeptical Democrats and those likely entrenched on either side.

This is not a final count, and will continue to be updated as more information becomes available. If your representative has sent you a letter or made a statement on immigration, please email it to us here with “immigration whip count” in the subject line.

SOURCE

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Arizona Immigration Law Ruling: Supreme Court Delivers Split Decision

HuffPost

By- Mike Sacks

Posted: 06/25/2012 10:19 am Updated: 06/25/2012  2:52 pm

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday delivered a split decision in the Obama administration’s challenge to Arizona’s aggressive immigration law, striking multiple provisions but upholding the “papers please” provision. Civil rights groups argue the latter measure, a centerpiece of S.B. 1070, invites racial profiling.

Monday’s decision on “papers please” — Section 2(B) in S.B. 1070 — rested on the more technical issue of whether the law unconstitutionally invaded the federal government’s exclusive prerogative to set immigration policy. The justices found that it was not clear whether Arizona was supplanting or supporting federal policy by requiring state law enforcement to demand immigration papers from anyone stopped, detained or arrested in the state who officers reasonably suspect is in the country without authorization. The provision that was upheld — at least for now — also commands police to check all arrestees’ immigration status with the federal government before they are released.

“The nature and timing of this case counsel caution in evaluating the validity of [Section] 2(B),” wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy on behalf of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor, noting that the law has not yet gone into effect. Because “[t]here is a basic uncertainty about what the law means and how it will be enforced,” the majority chose to allow the law to go forward, but made clear that “[t]his opinion does not foreclose other preemption and constitutional challenges to the law as interpreted and applied after it goes into effect.”

Indeed, such constitutional suits are already proceeding against Arizona’s “papers please” policy. Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton heard arguments on whether to certify a class of what could be hundreds of thousands of individuals now trying to bring equal protection, free speech and due process challenges to S.B. 1070.

While Arizona succeeded on Section 2(B), the Supreme Court gave the Obama administration a victory by striking three other challenged provisions as stepping on federal prerogatives. Two of the provisions made it a crime for undocumented immigrants to be present and to seek employment in Arizona, while a third authorized police officers to make warrantless arrests of anyone they had probable cause to believe had committed a deportable offense.

“The history of the United States is in part made of the stories, talents and lasting contributions of those who crossed oceans and deserts to come here,” Kennedy wrote. “The National Government has significant power to regulate immigration. With power comes responsibility, and the sound exercise of national power over immigration depends on the Nation’s meeting its responsibility to base its laws on a political will informed by searching, thoughtful, rational civic discourse. Arizona may have understandable frustrations with the problems caused by illegal immigration while that process continues, but the State may not pursue policies that undermine federal law.”

Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas each wrote separately to say they would have upheld all four of S.B. 1070’s challenged provisions, while Justice Samuel Alito wrote that he would have upheld all but the provision that criminalized an immigrant’s failure to register with federal authorities.

MORE HERE

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Obama Administration To Stop Deporting Younger Undocumented Immigrants And Grant Work Permits

HuffPost

Elise Foley

Posted: 06/15/2012  9:41 am Updated: 06/15/2012  1:12 pm

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration responded to years of pressure from immigrants rights groups on Friday with an announcement that it will stop deportations and begin granting work permits for some Dream Act-eligible students.

Some 800,000 people are expected to come forward to receive deferred action from deportation, as first reported by the Associated Press on Friday morning. The policy change will apply to young undocumented immigrants who entered the United States as children, along the same lines as the Dream Act, a decade-old bill that passed in the House of Representatives but failed in the Senate in 2010.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told reporters that the policy change is part of a general shift by the Obama administration to focus on deporting high-priority undocumented immigrants.

“This grant of deferred action is not immunity,” she said. “It is not amnesty. It is an exercise of discretion so that these young people are not in the removal system. It will help us to continue to streamline immigration enforcement and ensure that resources are not spent pursuing the removal of low-priority cases involving productive young people.”

“More important, I believe this action is the right thing to do,” she continued.

The policy change will effectively enable Dream Act-eligible young people, often called DREAMers, to stay in the United States without fear of deportation, and without legislation from a Congress that is unlikely to pass a bill.

Undocumented immigrants who came to the United States under the age of 16 and have lived in the country for at least five years can apply for the relief, so long as they are under the age of 30, according to a memo from DHS. They also must be either an honorably discharged veteran of the Coast Guard or armed forces, or a student who has graduated from high school or obtained a GED. Immigrants will not be eligible if they “post a threat to national security or public safety,” including having been convicted of a felony, a “significant” misdemeanor or multiple misdemeanors.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement, as well as Customs and Border Protection, were instructed in a memo to immediately react by reviewing individual cases and preventing eligible immigrants from being put in removal proceedings. Those already in proceedings could be granted deferred action for two years, and then may apply for renewal. They will be given work authorization on a case-by-case basis.

A senior administration official told reporters on the condition of anonymity that most eligible undocumented immigrants will be required to go to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services to provide documents and pay a fee.

MORE HERE

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Romney ‘Still Deciding What His Position On Immigration Is’

Huff Post

Elise Foley  Posted: 05/08/2012 1:06 pm Updated: 05/08/2012 3:17 pm

A Latino-vote outreach program on Tuesday plans to stress to voters that the president has failed on immigration reform and deported a record number of people, said the Republican National Committee’s top Hispanic outreach coordinator.

But so far, it doesn’t have a message on what Republicans would do on the issue themselves, and specifically the plans of presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney. In fact, coordinator Bettina Inclan told reporters, Romney didn’t have his immigration policy mapped out and the RNC would not yet be able to talk about it to Latino voters.

The RNC quickly tried to take back the statement, telling reporters who tweeted it that Inclan’s words were misunderstood — or that she was misquoted. Kirsten Kukowski, a spokeswoman for the RNC, said message coordination between the RNC and the Romney campaign is still in its early stages because challenger Rick Santorum only dropped out of the race two weeks ago.

Still, the statement by Inclan seemed to indicate the RNC’s lack of message on immigration, despite an increased effort to turn out Latino voters. Below is the full quote from Inclan, that Kukowski would later say was misconstrued:

I think that as a candidate, to my understanding that he’s still deciding what his position on immigration is, so I can’t talk about what his proposal is going to be because I don’t know what Romney exactly — he’s talked about different issues, and what we saw in the Republican primary is that there’s a diverse opinion on how to deal with immigration. I can’t talk about something that I don’t know what his position is.

A few minutes later, after apparently reading tweets from reporters on the phone and in the room, Kukowski said they were misreporting the statement.

“I want to clear something up. As far as what Governor Romney’s positions are on immigration, that is for him and his campaign to talk about, and they will tell you what their policies are,” she said. “In this room right now, and what we do at the RNC from a Hispanic outreach perspective, is on-the-ground community outreach in the Hispanic community.”

MORE HERE

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Mitt Romney Tries To Self-Deport Everything He’s Ever Said About Immigration Reform

Mitt Romney on immigration: January 23, 2012 vs. April 2, 2012

Daily Kos

Tue Apr 03, 2012 at 06:50 AM PDT

by Jed Lewison

Now Mitt Romney blamesPresident Obama for Republican obstruction on immigration reform:

“This has always been a priority for the President he chooses to do nothing about,” Romney said. “Let the immigrant community not forget that, while he uses this as a political weapon, he has not taken responsibility for fixing the problems we have.”

Sure … it’s President Obama’s fault that Republicans have blocked comprehensive immigration reform every single time it’s come up during the last decade. It’s Obama’s fault that Mitt Romney’s Republican Party won’t even support the DREAM Act. It’s got nothing to do with Republican extremism at all. Clearly, if you want to see immigration reform, you should trust Mitt Romney and a Republican Congress to get the job done:

“That is something that I will not just talk about in this campaign. This will be a priority of mine if I become president to make sure we finally reform our immigration laws step by step, secure the border, improve our legal immigration system, so we can keep people here and welcome people here who will make America a stronger nation,” he said.

I guess this is exactly what Romney’s campaign was talking about when it said Romney would try to Etch-A-Sketch his primary positions away.

Just a few months ago, he was staking out such a hardline position on immigration that even Rick Perry said he “didn’t have a heart.” And when Newt Gingrich said he didn’t want to deport otherwise law-abiding undocumented immigrants who had been here for a quarter-century, Romney thought it was a golden opportunity to attack Newt for being too pro-immigrant. Then, just to outdo himself, Romney not only said he favored an immigration policy that would lead to “self-deportation,” he said Arizona’s “Paper’s Please” law was a model for the nation.

But now Romney wants to win over a different set of voters, so he says the he’s the pro-immigrant candidate. He says that it’s Democrats who’ve been blocking immigration reform. He says that he wants an immigration policy designed to “keep people here.”

It’s an amazing reversal, even by Romney standards. And the most amazing thing of all is that he expects people to believe what he says.

SOURCE

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Brewer Pledged Cash For Immigration Fight, Instead Spent It Buying Copies Of Her Own Book

TPM Muckraker- Nick R. Martin

February  2, 2012, 11:47 AM

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) launched a special fundraising political action committee in October, pledging to use the money to fight illegal immigration and take on other issues she believes in. But based on financial disclosures filed this week, she has so far used it to do little more than buy copies of her own book.

The governor had raised only about $22,000 for Jan PAC by the end of 2011 and spent nearly a quarter of the cash buying books from Amazon and paying a bill at the luxurious Waldorf Astoria hotel in Orlando, Fla. The rest of the money is still in the bank.

Brewer spent $3,423 on books and shipping from the online retailer, according to the financial reports. On her fundraising website, she offers a signed copy of her book “Scorpions for Breakfast” to every donor who gives $100 or more.

In early December she also spent $624 for a night at the swank Waldorf Astoria in Orlando, which her financial disclosures repeatedly misspell as “Orlanda.” Another $513 went to airfare on Southwest Airlines.

A message left for representatives of Jan PAC was not returned.

In October, the governor launched the PAC with several goals: fighting illegal immigration, defeating the president’s healthcare plan, creating jobs and reducing the size of government.

The financial disclosures represent a time before Brewer’s now famous encounter with President Obama on an airport runway in Phoenix last week. Sales of “Scorpions for Breakfast” spiked on Amazon after the event and the governor used her renewed notoriety to encourage people to donate to Jan PAC.

Among the donors revealed in the financial disclosures were former US Transportation Secretary Mary Peters, who lives in the Phoenix suburb of Peoria and gave $250, and wealthy real estate developer Mike Ingram, who gave $1,000.

Brewer’s final term as governor ends in 2014 and she has not said whether she plans to run for another office after that.

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Rep. Virgil Peck, R-Kansas: Jokes About Controlling Illegal Immigration By Using Gunmen Who Shoot Feral Pigs From Helicopters (VIDEO)

Kansas Republican jokes about controlling illegal immigration by using the gunmen who shoot feral pigs from helicopters

Crooks & Liars- By John Amato

March 15, 2011 10:37 AM

Arizona is having an immediate impact on the sanity of local politicians all over the country. The latest loony-bin candidate is Virgil Peck of Kansas. And you wonder why Tuscon wants to split off and become its own state? Kansas certainly has its share of the nuts.

LJWorld:

A legislator said Monday it might be a good idea to control illegal immigration the way the feral hog population has been controlled: with gunmen shooting from helicopters.

Rep. Virgil Peck, R-Tyro, said he was just joking, but that his comment did reflect frustration with the problem of illegal immigration. Peck made his comment during a discussion by the House Appropriations Committee on state spending for controlling feral swine. After one of the committee members talked about a program that uses hunters in helicopters to shoot wild swine, Peck suggested that may be a way to control illegal immigration.

Appropriations Chairman Marc Rhoades, R-Newton, said Peck’s comment was inappropriate. Rhoades said he thought Peck was joking, but added, “Hopefully he won’t do it again.”

Asked about his comment, Peck was unapologetic. “I was just speaking like a southeast Kansas person,” he said. He said most of his constituents are upset with illegal immigration and the state and federal government response. He said he didn’t expect any further controversy over his comment. “I think it’s over,” he said.

Feral pigs and guns in helicopters. This is truly a horrifying thing to think, let alone say. And that’s not a joke.

Dome On The Range caught the audio and says:

Yes, Virgil. Everyone in Southeast Kansas believes that we should respond to immigration by sniping down brown people from a helicopter. Should we bother checking their citizenship status first or should we just go off “their olive complexion,” as suggested by your colleague, Rep. Connie O’Brien?

So much for toning down the rhetoric after the tragedy in Tucson. It’s worth noting that at the end of February, the Kansas Republican Party called union members protesting in the Capitol “thugs.” What seems more thuggish to you: Kansas workers exercising their right to free speech in a public building (in protest to a bill that suffocated their First Amendment rights), or an elected representative suggesting we should gun down immigrants like pigs?

Check out Peck’s website. It conjures up visions of a cross between VDARE and Stormfront with a hint of the Hutaree Militia.

MORE HERE

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Tea Party Activists Rally Along Arizona-Mexico Border

Tea Party Activists Rally Along Arizona-Mexico Border To Protest Illegal Immigration

JONATHAN J. COOPER | 08/15/10 04:57 PM |  Via- Huff Post

HEREFORD, Ariz. — Tea party groups converged on a remote section of the U.S.-Mexico border on Sunday to show support for Arizona’s controversial new immigration law.

The group was gathered about 70 miles west of Nogales on a private ranch where 15-foot steel posts are set closely together to prevent people from crossing the border.

Demonstrators attached hundreds of U.S. flags with messages about curbing illegal immigration to the posts and chanted, “U-S-A,” after a handful of spectators gathered on the Mexico side of the border.

One of the messages posted on the border wall read, “Mister President … Secure This Border For America.”

A federal judge has put on hold the most contentious provisions of the law, including a section that would require officers to check a person’s immigration status while enforcing other laws if they had “reasonable suspicion” that the person was in the country illegally.

Among those speaking at the rally Sunday was Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, known for his tough enforcement of immigration laws in Arizona’s most populous county. He said immigration enforcement goes far beyond the nation’s border and the Mexican Government should welcome U.S. border patrol or military forces to go after drug cartels south of the border.

MORE HERE

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Rep. Linda Sanchez: White Supremacist Groups Behind Arizona Immigration Law

Foxheads freak out when Rep. Linda Sanchez points out the white supremacists lurking behind Arizona’s immigration law

Crooks and Liars- By David Neiwert Friday Jun 04, 2010 11:30am

All day yesterday on Fox, the talking/shrieking heads were all worked up about some comments from Rep. Linda Sanchez about Arizona’s SB1070:

A California congresswoman is pointing the finger at white supremacist groups, who she says have inspired Arizona’s new law cracking down on illegal immigrants.

Rep. Linda Sanchez, D-Calif., told a Democratic Club on Tuesday that white supremacist groups are influencing lawmakers to adopt laws that will lead to discrimination.

“There’s a concerted effort behind promoting these kinds of laws on a state-by-state basis by people who have ties to white supremacy groups,” said the lawmaker, who is of Mexican descent. “It’s been documented. It’s not mainstream politics.”

Oh my God! Somebody tossed a little Baby Ruth of  Truth into the swimming pool!

Rick Folbaum told Jon Scott that Sanchez got her information from those notorious dispensers of inconvenient information, a left-wing blogger. (Hey, it coulda been C&L.) Megyn Kelly demanded of Clarissa Martinez of the National Council of La Raza that she denounce these horrendous words. And Sean Hannity didn’t even bother to query into whether what Sanchez said might be accurate — he just ran a quick segment sneering at her “Liberal Lie”.

The problem they have is that it’s in fact perfectly accurate. Sanchez may have gotten the information from a blogger, but it’s more than likely the blog got its information from the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League — both of which have, as Sanchez suggested, fully documented that a number of the leading “respectable” anti-immigration organizations are in fact fronts created by white-supremacist ideologues.

You see, Fox and everyone else has been running commentary from Kris Kobach, a well-paid lackey for the Federation for American Immigration Reform. Kobach has been boasting on Fox and elsewhere that he and his fellows at FAIR are helping to push the Arizona immigration law in other states as well.

Well, FAIR is exactly what Linda Sanchez described. And it’s not exactly news, either. Here’s the SPLC’s rundown on the three main groups involved in promoting the Arizona law:

FAIR, which Tanton founded and where he remains on the board, has been listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Among the reasons are its acceptance of $1.2 million from the Pioneer Fund, a group founded to promote the genes of white colonials that funds studies of race, intelligence and genetics. FAIR has also hired as key officials men who also joined white supremacist groups. It has board members who regularly write for hate publications. It promotes racist conspiracy theories about Latinos. And it has produced television programming featuring white nationalists.

CIS was conceived by Tanton and began life as a program of FAIR. CIS presents itself as a scholarly think tank that produces serious immigration studies meant to serve “the broad national interest.” But the reality is that CIS has never found any aspect of immigration that it liked, and it has frequently manipulated data to achieve the results it seeks. Its executive director last fall posted an item on the conservative National Review Online website about Washington Mutual, a bank that had earlier issued a press release about its inclusion on a list of “Business Diversity Elites” compiled by Hispanic Business magazine. Over a copy of the bank’s press release, the CIS leader posted a headline — “Cause and Effect?” — that suggested a link between the bank’s opening its ranks to Latinos and its subsequent collapse.

Like CIS, NumbersUSA bills itself as an organization that operates on its own and rejects racism completely. In fact, NumbersUSA was for the first five years of its existence a program of U.S. Inc., a foundation run by Tanton to fund numerous nativist groups, and its leader was an employee of that foundation for a decade. He helped edit Tanton’s racist journal, The Social Contract, and was personally introduced by Tanton to a leader of the Pioneer Fund. He also edited a book by Tanton and another Tanton employee that was banned by the Canadian border officials as hate literature, and on one occasion spoke to the Council of Conservative Citizens, a hate group which has called blacks “a retrograde species of humanity.”

Together, FAIR, CIS and NumbersUSA form the core of the nativist lobby in America. In 2007, they were key players in derailing bipartisan, comprehensive immigration reform that had been expected by many observers to pass. Today, these organizations are frequently treated as if they were legitimate, mainstream commentators on immigration. But the truth is that they were all conceived and birthed by a man who sees America under threat by non-white immigrants. And they have never strayed far from their roots.

The SPLC has further details about John Tanton and about FAIR, notably the accumulated record that induced the SPLC to designate it a hate group:

Founded by Tanton in 1979, FAIR has long been marked by anti-Latino and anti-Catholic attitudes. It has mixed this bigotry with a fondness for eugenics, the idea of breeding better humans discredited by its Nazi associations. It has accepted $1.2 million from an infamous, racist eugenics foundation. It has employed officials in key positions who are also members of white supremacist groups. Recently, it has promoted racist conspiracy theories about Mexico’s secret designs on the American Southwest and an alternative theory alleging secret plans to merge the United States, Mexico and Canada. Just last February, a senior FAIR official sought “advice” from the leaders of a racist Belgian political party.

It’s not just the SPLC that has reached this conclusion. The Anti-Defamation League’s assessment falls along similar lines.

Finally, it’s worth remembering that the two people most associated with SB1070 in Arizona — its coauthor, State Sen. Russell Pearce, and the law-enforcement officer whose immigration obsession inspired the law, Maricopa County’s Sheriff Joe Arpaio — themselves in fact have documented associations with Arizona neo-Nazis.

Fox may think they can whip this up, bloody shirt style, in favor of the Arizona law’s advocates. I’d wager those same people are wishing they’d just let it quietly drop. Because Linda Sanchez told the truth, and they all know it.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

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Lawsuit Over Arizona Immigration Law?

DOJ, Arizona officials meet over immigration law

Huff Post- PAUL DAVENPORT and PETE YOST | May 29, 2010 02:08 AM EST |

PHOENIX — Justice Department officials told Arizona’s attorney general and aides to the governor Friday that the federal government has serious reservations about the state’s new immigration law. They responded that a lawsuit against the state isn’t the answer.

“I told them we need solutions from Washington, not more lawsuits,” said Attorney General Terry Goddard, a Democrat.

The Justice Department initiated separate meetings by phone and face-to-face in Phoenix with Goddard and aides to Republican Gov. Jan Brewer to reach out to Arizona’s leaders and elicit information from state officials regarding the Obama administration’s concerns about the new law.

The strong message that the Justice Department representatives delivered at the private meetings – first with Goddard, then with Brewer’s staff – left little doubt that the Obama administration is prepared to go to court if necessary in a bid to block the new law, which takes effect July 29.

Goddard said he noted that five privately filed lawsuits already are pending in federal court to challenge the law.

“Every possible argument is being briefed,” said Goddard, who is running unopposed for his party’s nomination for the governor’s race.

Brewer, who is seeking re-election, later said in a statement that her legal team told the Justice Department officials that the law would be “vigorously defended all the way to the United States Supreme Court if necessary.”

MORE HERE

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