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Late last month, Congressman Luis Gutirrez (D-Ill.), introduced the American Hope Act, H.R. 3591, with 116 co-sponsors, all Democrats.

The bill would provide conditional permanent resident status for undocumented aliens who were brought to the U.S. before their 18th birthday, which would permit them to live and work here legally for three years and put them on a path to Legal Permanent Resident status and citizenship.

Such bills are referred to as DREAM Acts, an acronym for Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act.

It might be more accurate, however, to call this bill The False Hope Act.

What about DACA?

On June 15, 2012, former president Barack ObamaBarack ObamaOvernight Tech: Senate panel approves FCC nominees | Dem group invests in progressive startups | Tech groups rip Trump immigration plan Russian PM: New sanctions amount to 'full-scale trade war' America's divisions: The greatest strategic vulnerability of our time MORE established a program to offer temporary lawful status to undocumented aliens who were brought here as children, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

The DACA application process required them to admit alienage, concede unlawful presence, and provide their addresses, which puts them at risk if an enforcement-minded president decides to deport them.

Also, ICE officers may check the immigration status of family members when they arrest DACA participants, which could result in entire families being deported.

Threat to DACA

In a letter dated June 29, 2017, eleven state attorney generals asked U.S. Attorney General Jeff SessionsJefferson (Jeff) SessionsKelly called Sessions to assure him job is safe: report Overnight Regulation: Senate confirms Trump pick to labor board | Court lets states defend ozone rule | Regulator seeks input on changing 'Volcker Rule' US attorney fired by Trump sends well-wishes to new FBI director MORE to phase out the DACA program. They warned him that if he does not agree to do this by September 5, 2017, they will amend a pending lawsuit in a Federal District Court to include a challenge to DACA.

Even if Sessions rejects the request to phase out the program, the administration apparently does not intend to defend DACA in court if it is included in the Texas lawsuit.

American Hope Act

Gutirrezs bill last month would allow undocumented aliens to apply for conditional permanent resident status if they:

Why hasnt a DREAM Act bill been enacted?

No one knows for sure. I think it is due mainly to the fact that the number of undocumented aliens who would benefit from such legislation could get quite large. Also, the fact that they are innocent of wrongdoing with respect to being here unlawfully does not make it in our national interest to let them stay. This is particularly problematic with respect to the American Hope Act. Section 4 of this bill includes a waiver that applies to some serious criminal exclusion grounds.

Although estimates for the number of undocumented aliens who could be impacted are not available yet for the American Hope Act, they are available for similar bills that were introduced this year, the Recognizing America's Children Act, H.R. 1468, and the Dream Act of 2017, S. 1615.

The Migration Policy Institute estimates that potentially 2,504,000 aliens would be able to meet the minimum age at arrival and years of residence thresholds for the House bill and 3,338,000 for the Senate bill. However, some of them would need to complete educational requirements before they could apply.

Trump is supporting a revised version of the RAISE Act which would reduce the annual number of legal immigrants from one million to 500,000 over the next decade. It does not seem likely therefore that he will be receptive to a program that would make a very substantial increase in the number of legal immigrants.

Not merit-based.

The American Hope Act would treat all immigrant youth who were brought here as children the same, regardless of educational level, military service, or work history. Gutirrez said in a press release, We are not picking good immigrants versus bad immigrants or deserving versus undeserving, we are working to defend those who live among us and should have a place in our society.

This is inconsistent with the skills-based point system in the revised version of the RAISE Act that Trump is supporting. It would prioritize immigrants who are most likely to succeed in the United States and expand the economy. Points would be based on factors such as education, English-language ability, age, and achievements.

Thus, Democrats American Hope Act as presently written is very likely to suffer the same fate as the other DREAM Acts.

Success requires a fresh, new approach, and the approach taken by the revised RAISE Act might work by basing eligibility on national interest instead of on a desire to help the immigrants. Certainly, it would be more likely to get Trumps support.

Nolan Rappaport was detailed to the House Judiciary Committee as an executive branch immigration law expert for three years; he subsequently served as an immigration counsel for the Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims for four years. Prior to working on the Judiciary Committee, he wrote decisions for the Board of Immigration Appeals for 20 years.

The views expressed by contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.

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Democrats introduce another 'false hope' act to immigrants - The Hill (blog)

Jeffrey Kuhn, chair of the Democratic Committee in Bethlehem, is appealing Tuesday's decision on candidates his committee has endorsed.

Jeffrey Kuhn, chair of the Democratic Committee in Bethlehem, is appealing Tuesday's decision on candidates his committee has endorsed.

Bethlehem Democrats appeal decision on candidates

BETHLEHEM The town's Democratic Committee's picks for highway superintendent and town council are appealing last week's court decision which disqualified them from the primaries.

Candidates Daniel Coffey and Giles Wagoner along with committee chair Jeffrey Kuhn and member Pamela Skripak appealed Albany County Judge Michael Mackey's Tuesday ruling that invalided their Board of Election petitions, clearing the way for rival candidates George Harder and Daniel Morin to run in November on the Democratic line.

The Albany judge ruled that the petitions for their candidacies were not signed properly and thus invalid.

The Appellate Court will hear the case at 10 a.m. Thursday, Aug. 24.

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Bethlehem Democrats appeal decision on candidates - Albany Times Union

With President Donald Trumps Dr. Demento impersonation undermining his own party, the road should be open for Democrats to sweep the next election cycle. And, for the first time since their horrific defeat of 2016, not only nationally but also in the states, the Democrats are slowly waking up to the reality that they need to go beyond the ritual Trump-bashing.

No one will compare the recently released A Better Deal: Better Skills, Better Jobs, Better Wages slogan to Franklin D. Roosevelts New Deal, or even Newt Gingrichs Contract for America. One Bernie Sanders supporter called it anodyne, focus-grouped, consultant-generated pablum. Yet, at least it attempted to identify the party with something other than Trump hatred, which is all most Americans think the Democrats are all about.

The three Democratic parties

Before this new approach can work, Democrats need to decide what kind of party they are, or what coalition can bring them back into power. None of the present factions is strong enough, by themselves, to win consistently on a national basis; some accommodation between often opposing tendencies must be found. Finally, there needs to be a credible message that derives not from carefully orchestrated focus groups and surveys the Hillary Clinton approach but rather one that resonates with the very middle- and working-class voters that the party needs to win back.

Since the days of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the traditional Democratic Party has combined some degree of social moderation albeit often too timid on issues related to gays and racial minorities with a unifying message of economic growth, national security and upward mobility. Although business interests sometimes supported them, the old Democrats primarily directed their appeal to urban, and later suburban, middle- and working-class voters.

By the 1970s, many of these voters were headed rightward, as Democrats positions on social issues, defense and civil rights moved sharply to the left. Seeking to make up for some of the loss of some traditional FDR voters, Bill Clinton reoriented the party to include the rising class of information workers who were often socially liberal but fiscally conservative. But Clintons political genius and down-home image also helped Democrats retain some New Deal working-class support, even while forging stronger ties to tech companies, the rising professional class and Wall Street.

The third faction, the resurgent left, led by Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, grew out of the clear failure of the second Democratic Party, led by its elite wing, to address the consequences of neoliberal economics, notably increased inequality, reduced social mobility and, to some extent, environmental degradation. To these activists, the Clintonian party is not much more than a light version of mainstream Republicanism.

Only a coalition can work

The fundamental challenge of the Democrats today is winning back the voters who, for a host of reasons, both understandable and deplorable, supported Donald Trump. This makes the old Democratic message as reflected in the Better Deal key to unlocking the Electoral College and winning back its status as a national, rather than a bicoastal, party. As the New Deal party has declined, the Democrats have lost touch with potentially supportive voters in much of the Midwest, as well as the Intermountain West, the Great Plains and the South. There many still doggedly favor Trump, who, for all his inane blustering, at least seems committed to bring new jobs to hard-hit communities, as evidenced in the recent massive Foxconn investment in Wisconsin.

The Clintonian party lacks the street cred to play the populist hand against Trumpian intrusion. When Hillary Clinton started her talk about deplorables and focused largely on cultural issues, she demonstrated dramatically how much she had diverged from the popular instincts of her far savvier husband. Lets face it, like Secretary Clinton, New York Sen. Charles Schumer, the consigliere of Wall Street, is a bizarre choice to serve as a populist avatar. The Better Way attack on monopolies, aimed mostly at GOP-leaning pharmaceutical and industrial companies, is particularly suspect. Revealingly, these efforts do not seem to include prosecuting the increasingly dominant tech oligarchs, clearly the antitrust challenge of our time, with whom they are increasingly tied financially.

On economic issues, the third Democratic Party, the one closer to full-throated socialism, has far more credibility than the Clintonians. But the far-left Democrats, who often brook no diversity on issues, hold to positions anti-defense, hostility toward police, piously green that directly conflict with the attitudes and interests of the putative Trump voters. A worker at an Ohio factory may embrace a single-payer health care system, protectionist trade policies, raising taxes on the rich, and free college without wanting to raise energy prices, weaken the military, undermine policing, open the borders to all comers, tolerate more erosion of jobs that are moving overseas and impose transgender bathrooms on socially conservative communities.

Ultimately, like any political party in this polarized country, success lies in finding ways to bridge gaps among the warring factions. A Better Deal may be a decent first step, but, without reuniting its factions, it is hardly enough to engineer a new brand of politics, and another age of Democratic dominance.

Joel Kotkin is the R.C. Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University in Orange and executive director of the Houston-based Center for Opportunity Urbanism (www.opportunityurbanism.org).

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Reconciling the three Democratic parties - OCRegister

Conservative efforts at health-care reform are, for the moment, a shambles. Conservative efforts at tax reform are foundering as well, though their prospects may be sunnier, given the habitual Republican appetite for tax cuts of almost any description, including irresponsible ones.

Both the tax-reform project and the health-care project have run into trouble because of a lack of intellectual and political leadership: Washingtons sock drawers are stuffed full of conservative proposals to rationalize taxes and to nudge health care in a more market-oriented direction, but herding those congressional cats and conservative activists, think-tankers, PACs and super PACs, aspiring presidents, etc. in the same direction requires real political leadership. That is made difficult by the fact that the loudest conservative voices the talking mouths of cable news and the talk-radio ranters have a very heavy financial incentive to be dissatisfied, or at least to pronounce themselves dissatisfied, with whatever it is that Republican congressional leaders decide to support, while the president himself, who has decided that railing against Congress will be his substitute for leading them in his direction, has similar incentives.

If these two issues are any indicator, then the Trump administrations keystone issue immigration reform is on a course to end up wrecked upon the same rocky shoals.

Can that be prevented?

The Republican party is at odds with itself over what it actually wants out of an immigration policy. One the one hand, libertarian-leading Republicans and the Chamber of Commerce crowd think that the case for free trade is also the case, more or less, for free immigration, that the free flow of goods and capital across borders ought to be complemented by the free flow of labor. The open borders Republican is mainly a straw man deployed by the talk-radio gang: Advocates of a genuine open-borders policy of the sort that Great Britain maintained in the 19th century, when immigrants could show up in London without so much as proof of identity (much less a visa), are scarce. But there are a fair number of Republicans who prefer relatively high levels of immigration, including relatively high numbers of low-skilled immigrant workers from Latin America.

Opposing them are more restrictionist populist-nationalist Republicans, some of them in the Trump mold and some of them intelligent and responsible. These include those who see the world the way my colleague Mark Krikorian does, believing that current levels of immigration are bad for domestic workers, especially low-wage workers, and that recent immigrants have placed undue burdens on domestic institutions, especially the social-welfare and criminal-justice systems. They want lower immigration across the board, not only a crackdown on illegal immigration but also a significant reduction in legal immigration.

Can these differences be resolved in such a way as to allow the emergence of a unified Republicans approach to immigration?

Yes. And not only that: Democrats can be brought on board, too.

Democrats, in reaction to Trump, are at the moment moving rhetorically in a more liberal direction on immigration. But that is not where the Democratic base is right now, especially in the Rust Belt and the Midwest. At Bernie Sanders rallies I attended in Iowa during the primaries, union-hall Democrats offered up many an earful about the need for immigration control, and Senator Sanders himself denounced the Republican view of immigration as an open borders scheme hatched by right-wing billionaires looking to undermine the economic position of the American working class. Many of those voters no doubt cross the aisle for Donald Trump in places such as Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The Democrats cannot afford to lose those voters permanently, and they know as much.

So, where to begin?

Begin by cordoning off the issue of illegal immigration.

With the exception of a few oddballs and ideologues, we can all agree that whatever our national immigration policy ends up being, it must be conducted in an orderly and lawful fashion. That means that getting control of illegal immigration needs to be the first order of business. Happily, that is something we can do without waiting years or decades to build new walls that will, in the end, address the problem only partially. (Most illegals do not wade across the Rio Grande; they enter legally on visas and then violate them.) Through workplace enforcement (mandatory use of the E-Verify system) and modest financial controls (making it hard to cash a check or pay remittances without proof of legal status) we can greatly reduce the economic attraction of illegal immigration to the United States. (Border walls, properly understood, are not about illegal roofers and avocado-pickers: They are about terrorists and their instruments.) Jeff Sessions could do a great deal to advance this if he happened to haul in a few poultry-plant bosses or general contractors for employing illegals. There is no shortage of cases from which to choose.

Republicans should pursue this first and in legislative quarantine from other immigration reforms: It emphatically should not be part of a comprehensive immigration-reform package. Illegal immigration is focus, now illegal. We can take positive steps to control this problem right now, in a relatively straightforward fashion at relatively low cost. If our more libertarian-leaning friends are correct (Id bet against them here) and the nations agricultural industry is hamstrung by a lack of workers if the United States should decide that it has a shortage of poor people with few professional skills then that problem can be addressed in the future fairly easily. If what happens instead is that the price of tomatoes and landscaping labor goes up a little bit, then the republic shall endure.

There are many good and useful proposals for immigration, such as replacing family-oriented chain migration with a policy oriented more toward the economic needs and economic interests of the United States. President Trumps radical proposal would reduce immigration to levels not seen since...the 1980s, which is to say, to a few hundred thousand immigrants per year rather than the million or million-plus of recent years. A period of relatively low immigration might help in the projection of assimilation, which currently is producing mixed results. My own preference is for an economically oriented policy that, callous as it may sound, is approximately Cato for rich people and Krikorian for poor ones: Bring on the highly educated and affluent, the doctors and investors and entrepreneurs, and maybe take a pass on the 13 millionth day-laborer.

Thats a debate worth having. Indeed, the failures of Republican health-care and tax-reform efforts suggest very strongly that we need to have more of those debates in order to forge some kind of politically viable consensus behind conservative policy projects. But we do not have to do everything at once. Addressing illegal immigration is something we can do right now, something that Republicans and (most) Democrats can get behind and should get behind.

READ MORE: The Anomaly of American Immigration Time to End DACA On Immigration, Poetry Isnt Policy, but Poetry Matters

Kevin D. Williamson is National Reviews roving correspondent.

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Immigration: Stop Illegal Entry before Doing Anything Else | National ... - National Review

There was celebration in the air. Anxiety, too.

About 60 people who came to San Diego from Somalia refugees, immigrants, naturalized citizens gathered in a conference room in City Heights for their weekly meeting. Its an opportunity to work out problems, strengthen community bonds, share food. This time, Friday morning, they applauded those among them who had just completed a six-month program to learn how to read and write English.

And they worried.

Two days earlier, President Trump had endorsed a radical shift in the nations immigration policy. The bill would eventually cut in half the number of legal immigrants allowed into the country every year, currently more than 1 million, and it would take a decades-old system that favors family ties and turn it into one that is merit-based, giving preference to those with college degrees, job skills and the ability to speak English.

This legislation will not only restore our competitive edge in the 21st century, but it will restore the sacred bonds of trust between America and its citizens, Trump said at the White House. This legislation demonstrates our compassion for struggling American families who deserve an immigration system that puts their needs first and that puts America first.

Almost immediately, critics on both sides of the political aisle found fault with the plan and gave it little chance of passage. They disputed the claims that low-skilled immigrants are taking jobs from Americans and driving down wages, and they said the new restrictions would hurt the economy by shrinking the number of foreign-born workers at a time when the native population is decreasing.

To the Somalis gathered in City Heights, the new proposal felt mostly like more of the same. Trump made immigration reform a centerpiece of his presidential campaign, and since taking office in January hes moved to build a wall on the Mexican border, increase deportations, stem the influx of refugees and curtail visitors from certain Muslim-majority countries.

What hes telling us is were not welcome here, said Said Osman Abiyow, 34, president of the Somali Bantu Assn. of America, an aid organization he founded after arriving in 2003. This is not what America stands for around the world, where it has a great reputation as a place of freedom and peace.

Like many others in the room, Abiyow has relatives in Somalia he would like one day to bring to the United States. Now a U.S. citizen, hes hoping his sister can join him. But he said shes been caught up in the ban the administration put in place for newcomers from six predominantly Muslim countries (Somalia, Sudan, Libya, Iran, Syria and Yemen). He doesnt know when she might be allowed to come.

If the proposed changes go through, maybe never.

There were 44.7 million immigrants living in the United States in 2015 (the most recent year for which numbers are available), which was 13.4% of the U.S. population, according to the Pew Research Center. An estimated 11 million of those are believed to be here illegally. In San Diego County, Health and Human Services Agency figures show about 21.5% of the population is immigrants.

Under current policy, American citizens and permanent residents can sponsor spouses, minor children and parents for an unlimited number of green cards, and siblings and adult children for a limited number of visas. Thats how most lawful immigrants arrive here. In fiscal year 2015, for example, about 65% of the green cards went to relatives.

The new bill, sponsored by Republican Sens. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and David Perdue of Georgia, would still allow the spouses and minor children of U.S. citizens and permanent residents to come in, but it would end the preferences for siblings and adult children.

That left San Diego newcomer Rukiya Bare concerned during Fridays weekly meeting of the Somalis.

She came here with her husband and four children 10 months ago. But their 25-year-old daughter, Natesho, had to stay behind. Now shes trying to join the family and is currently in Saudi Arabia, Bare said. When her three-month visa there expires, shell have to leave the country or risk jail.

I worry about her all the time, Bare said through an interpreter. At night, during the day it hurts my heart, the stress of not having her with us.

Several of the Somalis said they came to the U.S. because of the immigration-policy emphasis on family unity. The Somalis are a tightknit group (there were 3,534 in the county in 2015) and family connections can be crucial to helping them survive in new surroundings, Abiyow said.

Sado Moh, 29, misses her mother. Moh arrived in San Diego four months ago after spending 10 years in a refugee camp and is hoping her mother, father and four siblings will be able to come, too. That was already uncertain because of the other immigration initiatives pursued by the Trump administration, she said, and the latest proposal seems to her the most threatening yet. It would cap the number of refugees admitted annually at 50,000, about half of what it has been.

I ran away from civil war and came here to build a new life, Moh said through an interpreter. But without my family, what I feel mostly is lonely. I want them to come here and have the same chance for a new life. Then I will be happy.

Lawful immigrants are more likely to be of working age (18 to 64) than native-born U.S. citizens, according to Pew 76% compared with 60%.

The occupation with the largest percentage of immigrant workers, about 20%, is farming, fishing and forestry. Many of those workers are drawn to San Diego County, which has more than 5,700 small family farms (most of them less than 10 acres). Nationwide, the county is first in avocado and nursery-crop production; third in honey production; fifth in lemons; and ninth in strawberries.

About 11,000 people are employed as farmworkers in the county, and most are immigrants a mixture of people who are here both legally and illegally.

Under the new immigration legislation, preference for green cards would be determined by a point system for attributes like education, English-language ability, high-paying job offers, entrepreneurial initiative and achievements (such as a Nobel Prize). Although that would seem to suggest limited opportunities for farmworkers, supporters of the bill said it will help bring up wages, perhaps making the jobs more attractive to native-born workers.

Wilkens writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune.

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Proposal to limit legal immigration ripples through Somali families in San Diego - Los Angeles Times