Rep. Grijalva on ISIS and Presidential Action on Immigration Reform
By: RaulGrijalvaAZ07
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Rep. Grijalva on ISIS and Presidential Action on Immigration Reform - Video
September 3, 2014 By FAIR Gov't Relations Team 1 Comment
As American children across the country head back to school this fall, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has finally released county level data on the numbers of unaccompanied alien minors who will be joining them after being released to "sponsors" throughout the United States. The table released by HHS last week shows each county where 50 or more minors have been released to [Read More]
September 2, 2014 By Eric Ruark 10 Comments
September is coming and so is the start of a new school year. This year, there will be almost 37,000 unaccompanied alien minors who will be enrolling in public school in the United States. These kids will require special Limited English Proficient (LEP) classes conducted in Spanish, or in other languages indigenous to Central American, as well as other taxpayer funded services, such as free [Read More]
September 2, 2014 By Dan Stein 2 Comments
Texas Guard Troops Assist Border Patrol "As of last week, 400 guardsmen had arrived. A total of 1,000 are expected to gather in the coming weeks, concentrated in this stretch of border on Texas's southernmost tip, running through the Rio Grande Valley from Brownsville to McAllen. This region has been seen as especially vulnerable to illegal crossings," the Washington Post writes in a story about [Read More]
August 29, 2014 By Adrienne Royer 4 Comments
Noted investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson recently spoke with FAIRs president, Dan Stein, about the secretive reactions of the federal government to the border crisis. During the news segment Attkisson explains: The government has abruptly shut down operations at Fort Sill in Oklahoma and two other military bases that sheltered more than 7,700 minors the government refers to as [Read More]
August 29, 2014 By Dan Stein 11 Comments
Warning Issued of Possible Terrorist Activity at Border "Islamic terrorist groups are operating in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez and planning to attack the United States with car bombs or other vehicle born improvised explosive devices (VBIED). High-level federal law enforcement, intelligence and other sources have confirmed to Judicial Watch that a warning bulletin for an imminent [Read More]
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Immigration Reform Blog
Immigration rights advocates are pushing President Obama to brush aside calls from fellow Democrats to delay executive action on deportations until after the election.
"I say to the Democrats: Stand aside," Rep. Luis Gutirrez (D-Ill.) said during a press call Wednesday. "Let the president make a decision; let him announce it; and stop this stopping the progress of our community towards justice."
Other advocates piled on.
"Right now, Republicans own letting the country down on delivering a solution," she added. "If some Democrats step in to prevent executive action, then the Democrats will co-own that inaction and the devastation that continues to be wreaked on our communities."
In June, Obama warned GOP leaders that, in the absence of congressional action on immigration reform, he would consider unilateral policy changes recommended by top administration officials "before the end of the summer" and adopt them "without further delay."
But a number of Senate Democrats facing tough reelection bids have pushed back against that plan, wary that new executive actions will energize GOP voters who oppose immigration reform and feel Obama is prone to abusing his powers.
"The best thing would be for Congress to act," Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), who's battling for a fourth term, said last month.
The White House in recent days has walked back Obamas "end of the summer promise, insisting there is no timetable for potential executive action.
"It's hard for me to draw any clear conclusions about what the president's timing will be," White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Tuesday. "There is the chance that it could be before the end of the summer. There is the chance that it could be after the summer."
Gutirrez and other immigrant rights advocates say any delay would be a mistake both politically and in policy terms. They noted that Democrats benefitted at the polls in 2012, just a few months after Obama adopted the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program which halted deportations for some illegal immigrants brought to the country as kids and predicted a similar outcome if Obama acted again ahead of this year's midterms.
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Immigration advocates to Obama: Dont let Dems stand in the way
New America Media, Commentary, Angelo Falcn , Posted: Sep 03, 2014
The immediate big question is whether President Obama will be taking decisive executive actions to stop and slow deportations before the midterm elections. A politically cautious move would be to keep promising to do so, but actually doing it sometime after November. This would make the most jittery members of his party running for reelection less jittery while continuing to make promises to Latino and other immigration advocates who otherwise have no place else to go. Or, who knows, the President might make a bold move by implementing long-overdue executive actions to keep his promises to the Latino community, with the only political benefit to him being using this to promote more unpopular impeachment talk by the Republicans. Then there is a possibility that he will come up with some weak middle ground that nobody will be happy with, except the America with Obama political triangulators.
By postponing any action on deportations until after the midterms, the President then moves the issue within the dynamics of the 2016 Presidential race. This would put more pressure on the Republicans to compromise on some form of comprehensive immigration reform. It would then increase the possibility of the President coming up with some sort of legislative solution to this problem. But will the dynamics change radically in Washington if the Democrats lose control of the Senate? No one really knows.
Within this context, there are still Latino and other immigration advocates who are holding on to the hope (some say foolishly) of comprehensive immigration reform passing the Congress in this session while at the same time pushing for unilateral action on this issue by the President. The Congressional inaction on proposals to address the issue of the unaccompanied border kids should be a clear tip-off that the future of comprehensive immigration reform through the Congress anytime soon is, pardon the pun, the stuff of dreamers.
All indications are that any Congressionally created immigration reform will be largely punitive against Latinos and other poor immigrants. The Senate bill, which was widely lauded when proposed last year, creates a bureaucratic nightmare, more of an obstacle course than a path to citizenship. And it would add to an already overly-militarized border, at a time when the Michael Brown case has raised the nation's consciousness about the negative and often deadly effects of militarizing our police. And this was the best that the Congress could produce; with even more disastrous versions emerging after it failed to get support.
Which raises the question: Does the Latino community need fundamentally to reassess our strategy for immigration reform, both from a political and policy perspective? The move to focus on what the President can accomplish unilaterally through executive action is a good first step. But the political winds in the next few years promise to be tortuous for Latinos and the country as a whole. How we navigate them as a community may require the need to get back creatively to basics.
Angelo Falcn is president of the National Institute for Latino Policy (NiLP). He can be reached at afalcon@latinopolicy.org.
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Do We Need to Reassess Our Immigration Reform Strategy?
Ted Cruz: Only the White House is talking about a government shutdown
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) spoke at the Americans for Prosperity #39;s Defending the American Dream summit Saturday afternoon. Afterwards, he took questions on Obamacare, immigration reform, constitution...
By: Washington Post
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Ted Cruz: Only the White House is talking about a government shutdown - Video