Posts Tagged ‘immigration’
The House Of Representatives Members Most Likely To Back Immigration Reform
Posted in immigration, Immigration Bill, Immigration Reform, tagged House Gop Immigration, House Gop Immigration Reform, House Immigration, House Immigration Bill, House Immigration Reform, House Republicans Immigration, House Republicans Immigration Reform, immigration, immigration bill, Immigration Reform, Immigration Whip Count, Latino Politics, Politics News on July 9, 2013| Leave a Comment »
Romney ‘Still Deciding What His Position On Immigration Is’
Posted in 2012, 2012 campaign, 2012 Election, immigration, Mitt Romney, RNC, Video, tagged immigration, Latino Politics, Mitt Romney, Mitt Romney 2012, Politics News, RNC, Rnc Immigration, Romney, Romney Illegal Immigration, Romney Immigration, Video on May 8, 2012| Leave a Comment »
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.”
Mitt Romney Tries To Self-Deport Everything He’s Ever Said About Immigration Reform
Posted in 2012, 2012 Election, immigration, Mitt Romney, tagged 2012, Election 2012, immigration, Mitt Romney on April 3, 2012| Leave a Comment »
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.
Brewer Pledged Cash For Immigration Fight, Instead Spent It Buying Copies Of Her Own Book
Posted in Arizona, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, immigration, Jan Brewer, PACS, tagged * Arizona, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, Books, Fundraising, immigration, Jan Brewer, PACs on February 2, 2012| 1 Comment »
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.
Rep. Virgil Peck, R-Kansas: Jokes About Controlling Illegal Immigration By Using Gunmen Who Shoot Feral Pigs From Helicopters (VIDEO)
Posted in immigration, Right-Wing Extremists, Video, tagged immigration, OTC, Rep. Virgil Peck, Right-Wing Extremists, Virgil Peck on March 15, 2011| 3 Comments »
Kansas Republican jokes about controlling illegal immigration by using the gunmen who shoot feral pigs from helicopters
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.
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.
Summer of Republican Race-Baiting
Posted in Arizona Immigration Law, Constitution, Ground Zero Mosque, tagged Anchor Babies, Arizona Immigration Law, Constitution, Fourteenth Amendment, Ground Zero Mosque, immigration, Mosque Ground Zero, Muslim, Obama Muslim, Obama Muslim Smear, race, Race Baiting, Racism, September 11th, Shirley Sherrod, Southern Strategy on August 25, 2010| Leave a Comment »
Earlier this year, Republican Party chairman Michael Steele admitted that the GOP has engaged in Southern Strategy politics: employing racial, anti-minority code language and fear-mongering as a means of energizing the party’s white Christian base.
This is a fact. The Southern Strategy is real, though it’s no longer exclusively “southern.”
There’s no disputing its widespread use. Come to think of it, for Steele to “confess” to the the GOP’s use of the Strategy makes it seems as though it was previously a secret. It wasn’t. Fact: the Republican Party routinely tweaks white fear, paranoia, prejudice and resentment in order to win votes and score political points at the expense of demonized minority groups. They engage in stereotyping and misinformation and they rarely, if ever, use the “n-word” these days, though they might as well. After all, as the Strategy goes, blacks and minorities aren’t voting Republican anyway, so… let fly.
And it works. So well, in fact, that it’s still actively used on AM talk radio and on Fox News Channel as a ratings-grabber, not to mention as a recruitment tool for the various tea party groups. If you can effectively convince the majority race that they’re being somehow victimized by the significantly smaller minority, you have a seriously powerful (and clearly immoral) psycho-weapon in your arsenal.
This year has to be some kind of high water mark for white antagonism against minorities, and evidence that the Republicans, along with the array of far-right apparatchiks, don’t really have a serious agenda for governing to sell or, for that matter, anything of value to say. And so they do this. They continue to tap into a mother lode of white majority self-pity and inchoate rage as a form of spackle over the gaping holes in their ridiculous policy arguments.
Take a good look at the big stories of the last several months — the stories that have been driven by the far-right machine, injected into the mainstream and subsequently debated by the rest of the country — partly as a result of the far-right’s money, loudness and tenacity, and partly because these arguments are too obnoxious and outrageous, and therefore too irresistible, to avoid. I’ve been hearing a lot about August being “crazy month,” but the crazy topics have spanned the entire summer and beyond.
Tea Party Activists Rally Along Arizona-Mexico Border
Posted in Arizona Immigration Law, immigration, tagged Arizona Immigration Law, Illegal Immigration, immigration, Immigration Reform, John McCain, Tea Party on August 15, 2010| Leave a Comment »
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.
BREAKING: Arizona Immigration Law: Judge Blocks Parts Of Bill
Posted in Arizona Immigration Law, tagged * Arizona, Arizona Immigration, Arizona Immigration Law, Arizona SB1070, federal immigration law, immigration, immigration status, Judge Blocks Arizona Immigration Law, Judge Blocks Parts Of Ariz. Immigration Law, SB1070 on July 28, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Omar Torres, AFP/Getty Images- Mexican immigrants carrying bottles of water attempt to cross the Mexico-U.S. border illegally from Sasabe, in the state of Sonora into the Arizona desert in the United States, April 2006.
Huff Post
Elise Foley &
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.
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