Comprehensive immigration reform the next battle in Congress

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

"President Obama, fresh off a trouncing of congressional Republicans over
the government shutdown, plans to renew his push for immigration
legislation in the House while also pressing ahead with climate change
policies and efforts to fix problems plaguing his signature health-care
program." Obama
plans to renew immigration, climate change efforts.

Earlier this month, House Democrats introduced their own immigration reform bill sans the "border surge" of the Senate's "Gang of Eight" bill, with a positive reception from some Republican House members. House immigration bill — minus the surge – Politico:

The legislation released Wednesday is meant to build
pressure on House Republican leaders who have so far shown little public
urgency on the issue of immigration reform. And already, some GOP
lawmakers — particularly those who hail from competitive districts or
areas with large concentrations of Latino residents — are expressing
some openness to the Democrats’ proposal.

Their plan is to take the comprehensive immigration reform
legislation that passed the Senate with wide bipartisan margins in June,
but without the so-called border surge amendment added in the final
days of the floor debate. In its place, Democrats have inserted a
bipartisan border-security bill whose chief sponsor is House Homeland
Security Committee Chairman Mike McCaul (R-Texas).

[That bill, crafted by Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mike McCaul (R-Texas), passed with unanimous bipartisan support in the House Homeland Security Committee in May. It gives the Department of Homeland Security two years to come up with a
plan to apprehend at last 90 percent of individuals who cross the border
illegally.]

“The biggest issue I had with the Senate bill was the border-security
piece. I support the McCaul bill,” said California Rep. Jeff Denham,
one of a handful of House Republicans who have voiced support for
immigration reform. “It sounds very positive, but I will always wait to
see what those details are.”

Rep. David Valadao (R-Calif.) said, “there’s a lot of good things” in
the Senate Gang of Eight immigration bill and indicated some interest
in the House Democratic plan.

“If there’s some common-sense legislation out there, it doesn’t
matter who starts it,” Valadao said. “If there’s an opportunity to do
something that’s moving the ball forward, I’ll look at it.”

The bill’s release Wednesday doesn’t directly change the prospects for
immigration reform in the Republican-led House, where the issue has been
put on the back burner[.]

A spokesman for House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said in an
email Wednesday that the House Democratic immigration legislation has a
“zero percent” chance of making it to the floor. And a House Judiciary
Committee aide indicated that the chairman, Bob Goodlatte of Virginia,
isn’t inclined to take up the bill in his panel.

Democrats insist the bill would pass if House Speaker John Boehner
(R-Ohio) allowed it to come to the House floor for a vote, because it
contains many provisions that have received bipartisan support.

After the debt default showdown last week, Rep. Raúl Labrador (Teabagger-Idaho) said that it had doomed any chances for immigration reform. Raul Labrador: Immigration Reform Is Dead After Spending Showdown:

Labrador said he doesn't want the House to pass anything on
immigration — even piecemeal bills that many GOP members support —
because it could be combined with the Senate-passed comprehensive reform
bill.

"Anything that you pass to the Senate piecemeal they're going to try
to conference it with their Senate bill," he said. "It's not worth doing
it."

During the event, Labrador said "it would be crazy" for House
Republicans to go to conference with the Senate on immigration and
attempt to combine the two chambers' bills. Rep. Matt Salmon (R-Ariz.)
said House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) told him they would only deal
with piecemeal legislation and would not conference on the Senate bill.

"I think what he has done over the past two and a half weeks — he's
trying to destroy the Republican party," Labrador said of Obama. "I
think that anything we do right now with this president on immigration
will be with that same goal in mind, which is to destroy the Republican
party and not to get good policies."

The Tea-Publicans are destroying themselves, but they will always blame someone else because they cannot admit any error of their beliefs. It is a question of faith, and facts, logic and reason cannot shake their articles of faith. Failing to pass immigration reform will only push the Latino voter bloc into the Democratic Party coalition and become a self-fulfilling prophecy, Mr. Labrador.