The GOP reaffirms it is ‘the party of maximum deportations’

It seems like a lifetime ago when the 2012 post-election GOP Autopsy report declared:

We are not a policy committee, but among the steps Republicans take in the Hispanic community and beyond, we must embrace and champion comprehensive immigration reform. If we do not, our Party’s appeal will continue to shrink to its core constituencies only. We also believe that comprehensive immigration reform is consistent with Republican economic policies that promote job growth and opportunity for all.

The U.S. Senate overwhelmingly passed a bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform bill in July 2013. It then died in the TanMan’s House, where he allowed the nativist and racist Deportation Republicans, led by Reps. Steve King (R-IA) and Michele Bachman (R-MN), to hijack the legislative process with their own “no compromise” Border Security bill in August 2014.

Tea-Publicans no longer make any pretense of supporting immigration reform. Deportation Republicans are fully in control of the party as Tea-Publicans devolve into the modern-day reincarnation of the nativist Know-Nothing party of the 19th Century.

Think Progress reports, The House’s Newest Immigration Plan Is Mass Deportation:

The House Judiciary Committee is taking up a bill this week that would make felons out of the vast majority of undocumented immigrants overnight.

The bill would repeal the president’s November 20 immigration directives, which would give 5 million parents and DREAMers temporary legal protection and work authorization; make illegal presence a crime rather than a civil offense; and overturn the Supreme Court’s decision in Arizona v. United States, which rightfully struck down much of S.B.1070, Arizona’s law that put state and local enforcement of immigration on steroids. Taken together, all the bill’s provisions amount to a strategy for comprehensive mass deportation.

The House Judiciary Committee’s current focus on making life as difficult as possible for unauthorized immigrants — including stand-alone bills to make the government’s E-Verify system mandatory for all employers, to make it more difficult for those fleeing violence and persecution to gain asylum, and to strip important protections from child refugees — smacks of the discredited “self-deportation” strategy pursued by states like Arizona, with S.B. 1070, and candidates like Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election.

But the bill dubbed the Michael J. Davis, Jr. in Honor Of State And Local Law Enforcement Act goes far beyond simply self-deportation. This comprehensive enforcement measure — a reboot of the SAFE Act from 2013 — is as far from actual comprehensive immigration reform as possible. Whereas the comprehensive reform plan passed by the Senate in 2013 would have put the 11 million unauthorized immigrants living in the country on a pathway to citizenship while making strategic investments in our border security and fixing our legal immigration system, this bill would, among other provisions:

• Turn the civil penalty of being in the country without authorization into a criminal one, making felons out of the vast majority of the undocumented population overnight. (Secs. 315 and 316)
• Make immigration agents out of all state and local law enforcement officials (Sec. 102), opening the door to the types of racial profiling problems that stood at the heart of bills like Arizona’s S.B. 1070.
• Overturn state TRUST Acts, passed by states like California to limit the damages from excessive immigration enforcement on otherwise law-abiding immigrants. (Secs. 114 and 115)
• Reinstate the problematic Secure Communities program that had been ended with the DHS directives, and pump it full of steroids: DHS would be required to detain any immigrant picked up by states and localities, rather than having the discretion to consider the merits of the individual’s case. (Sec. 108)
• Remove the possibility of any affirmative relief, such as deferred action or withholding of removal, for many immigrants, even when they have compelling reasons, such as family unity, to remain in the country (Secs. 201 and 603).

Just over a year ago House Speaker John Boehner (R-IL) floated a set of Republican standards for immigration reform that would have created a pathway to legal status for many of the same people that this bill would criminalize.

Boehner’s standards for immigration reform are now nowhere in sight.

And there is this bill seeking to punish the DREAMers, children who are undocumented immigrants through no culpability of their own. Republicans’ Latest Salvo In Anti-Immigrant Fight: Take Away Social Security Numbers:

Six Republican senators introduced a bill Monday that would prohibit the government from issuing Social Security numbers to undocumented immigrants protected under the president’s executive action on deportation relief. The bill is the latest salvo in the Republican-led fight against the president’s immigration policies to grant temporary work authorization and deportation relief to some undocumented immigrants living in the United States.

In a press release, the bill’s sponsor Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE) wrote that the Amnesty Bonuses Elimination (ABE) Act would “ensure that new Social Security Numbers are not issued to illegal aliens receiving deferred action under the President’s unlawful executive amnesty.”

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Social Security numbers allow undocumented immigrants to apply for jobs and to obtain state identification cards like driver’s licenses. A University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) study found that DACA beneficiaries saw at least a 150 percent wage increase when they’re allowed to work. A Center for American Progress (CAP) study found that moving undocumented immigrants from the informal (under the table) economy into the formal economy would see an 8.5 percent increase in legal, taxable earnings. A previous CAP study found that higher wages earned by undocumented immigrants brought into the formal economy could lead to purchases such as houses, cars, phones, and clothing.

And advocates point out that because undocumented immigrants already pay billions of dollars per year into the Social Security system through sales, income, and other taxes, depriving of them of Social Security numbers leaves then uniquely disadvantaged.

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Once undocumented immigrants are able to obtain Social Security numbers, Sasse claims that they could reap about $2 billion in Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), a federal benefit. The ABE Act would prohibit new numbers from being issued to anyone who was granted deferred action between June 15, 2012 and November 20, 2014 as a result of the president’s 2012 executive action known as the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

Just last week, Sasse and Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) sent a letter to the Social Security Administration requesting information on the number of individuals granted social security numbers to determine how many of them would receive benefits under the Social Security Disability Insurance program or the Supplemental Security Income program.

Sasse’s argument that some undocumented immigrants could collect more than $24,000 in EITC comes from an unlikely scenario in which immigrants could file amended tax returns for the last three years and earn the maximum credit available to taxpayers with three or more children and who are within a specific income range. Just 12 percent of EITC recipients fulfill that criteria and many do not qualify for the maximum credit. The last time a lawmaker — Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) — made this argument, a Treasury Department spokesman told the Washington Post that the claims process would mean many undocumented immigrants could owe more taxes rather than reaping a tax benefit.

Here in Arizona, Attorney General Mark “I’d like to buy a vowel” Brnovich is going to continue his predecessor’s legal fight to deny in-state tuition to DREAMers under the DACA program. Arizona AG Sticking With Lawsuit Against In-State Tuition for DACA Recipients:

Although many Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients in Arizona have been educated their entire lives in Arizona public schools, the Attorney General’s Office under former AG Tom Horne sued the Maricopa County Community College board last year in an attempt to end the practice of granting in-state tuition for students who are DACA recipients.

New Times heard from Brnovich’s office earlier this month that he intends to continue on with the lawsuit. In response to a public call from three Democratic members of Congress to end the lawsuit, Brnovich issued a public response of his own, saying, “no.”

 The Latino community had better wake up and mobilize, organize and finally turn out en masse to vote, or these “Know Nothing” Deportation Republicans are coming for you and your family. If you believe that It Can’t Happen Here, you are dead wrong.

An American people who no longer participate and vote in their democracy can empower a small band of radical extremists who do turn out to vote to seize control of political power. And their vote will carry the imprimatur of a democratically elected government. Democracies die from indifference and neglect. It is way past time for you to stand up and be counted.