Immigration

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

I posted about the "border surge" amendment from Sens. Bob Corker (R-TN) and John Hoeven (R-SD) to the "Gang of Eight" comprehensive immigration bill last week. The price for GOP nativism and racism: $30+ billion wasted dollars. As Chris Hayes pointed out:

Now when you were evaluating — you right now watching this — the American

voter, the American citizen, the American taxpayer, you`re thinking: is

this a smart way to spend money?

I would like you to keep in mind these two important things. The Migration

Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, found that in 2012 we spent $18

billion on immigration enforcement agencies, a 43 percent increase from

2006. Here`s the kicker. That $18 billion, that`s more than we spent on

all other law enforcement agencies combined by 24 percent.

And do you happen to know what the net migration between Mexico and the

United States currently is? It is zero. Zero.

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

It increasingly appears as if a compromise on additional border security has now been worked out by the Gang of Eight" in the U.S. Senate, and the comprehensive immigration bill is taking shape. Ed Kilgore at the Political Animal blog writes,

Big Moment in the Senate on Immigration?

it looks like the Gang of Eight (and the largely Democratic coalition of senators supporting them) are going to announce
a new border enforcement “compromise” that will be attributed to
Republicans Bob Corker and John Hoeven. It basically involves massive
new spending on border control agents and fence-building that would
occur before newly legalized immigrants can get on the famed “path to
citizenship.” But it doesn’t embrace a “hard trigger” of border
enforcement netrics, as conservative typically want, and also doesn’t
hold up the initial legalization of undocumented immigrants, as most
Senate Republicans voted for just last week in the Grassley Amendment.

In effect, this is pretty much the Gang of Eight’s border enforcement
provisions with congressionally prescribed steps for improving
enforcement (not just leaving it up to DHS) and a very large bag of
money (and you can probably thank CBO’s positive report yesterday on the fiscal impact of immigration reform for making that feasible).

By Tom Prezelski

Re-blogged from Rum, Romanism and Rebellion

Lets make it clear that, contrary to the impression one gets from
MSNBC, Speaker John Boehner is not a hapless idiot. He is a politically
savvy and sincerely pragmatic guy who suffers from the lack of good
material in his caucus. While he is no Sam Rayburn or Henry Clay, he is
also no Andy Tobin, and under slightly more favorable circumstances, he
might be known as a competent manager of the legislative process. One
does not get to be in his position by being a doofus.

What has had MSNBC personalities particularly animated over the last 24 hours is the possibility that Boehner may invoke the so-called “Hastert Rule” regarding the immigration bill
and increasingly strident rhetoric from The Professional Right on the
issue. The concern is that the House will either pass its own bill, or
amend the Senate bill to the point where it is unrecognizable. This,
they believe, will kill the possibility of reform, a notion based on a
misunderstanding of the process.