Rep. Cardenas joins New Dems to talk about Comprehensive Immigration Reform
originally recorded Feb. 27, 2014.
By: Rep. Tony Cardenas
See the original post here:
Rep. Cardenas joins New Dems to talk about Comprehensive Immigration Reform - Video
L.E. Baskow
Supporters with Fast for Families rally with their speakers during a media stop in downtown Henderson as part of a nationwide bus tour Friday, Feb. 28, 2014. L.E.Baskow
By Tovin Lapan (contact)
Friday, Feb. 28, 2014 | 7:24 p.m.
Fast for Families, a national campaign advocating for immigration reform, visited Southern Nevada on Friday, picking up fellow hunger strikers and proponents for congressional action along the way.
In November, Fast for Families sought to catalyze the immigration debate when Eliseo Medina of the Service Employees International Union, Dae Joong DJ Yoon of the National Korean American Service & Education Consortium, Rudy Lopez of the Fair Immigration Reform Movement and Cristian Avila of Mi Familia Vota participated in a hunger strike on the National Mall, abstaining from all nourishment except for water, for 22 days.
Avila spoke at a press conference Friday morning across the street from the Henderson Detention Center, the main facility in Nevada for housing immigrants detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Inaction is not an option, he said. There were a lot of ups and downs in 2013 for the movement. It was like a roller coaster. The fast created a lot of momentum, and we are building on that momentum with the bus tour. Congress will get the message, from community after community, people are committed to seeing reform happen.
Avila, 23, has received a work permit under the deferred action for childhood arrivals program, but his parents are still living in the country illegally. He said the 26 pounds he lost during the winter fast were nothing compared with the sacrifice his parents and others have made in search of a better life for their children.
Immigration reform was dubbed a top priority by the Obama administration after the 2012 election. And a bill addressing border security, guest workers, high-skilled labor and the estimated 11 million immigrants living in the country illegally did pass the Senate the following June, but stalled in the House.
Link:
Immigration advocates go hungry to send message to Washington
Published: Sunday, March 2, 2014 at 6:01 a.m. Last Modified: Thursday, February 27, 2014 at 7:40 p.m.
In the State of the Union address and the Republican response, President Obama and Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers each identified immigration reform as a priority. Just a few days later, House Republicans released their Standards for Immigration Reform, another sign of bipartisan support for this critical issue.
But since then, Speaker John Boehner has expressed doubt about the path forward for reform. As an evangelical pastor in Florida, I pray that leaders will overcome such doubt, and I wholeheartedly support movement on immigration reform.
Immigrants contribute to the growth and prosperity of Gainesville and of our nation. Almost all economists agree that immigrantsand undocumented immigrants specifically have a net positive impact on our economy. Reform would provide an economic stimulus that would not cost a dime of taxpayer money, helping to reduce our deficit.
Immigrants' contributions are not merely economic, though: As a pastor, I also see the plethora of ways that immigrants have helped to build our local church. Our congregation, like thousands of others across the U.S., equips its members many of whom are immigrants to live out our mission of sharing God's love in our community. We need a system that works better for immigrants themselves and for our churches, our national security and our economy.
As a Christian, I know God calls me both to welcome the stranger (Matthew 25) and to uphold the rule of law (Romans 13). Our current dysfunctional immigration laws make it impossible to do either well. They force our hard-working neighbors to live in the shadows, keeping them vulnerable to crime, labor exploitation and even human trafficking.
Indiscriminate deportations have torn families apart, hurting families that were once economically self-sufficient. Hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizen children have experienced the deportation of a parent in the past several years, a reality that I and many other pastors have witnessed firsthand. Our laws must be amended to be more welcoming and family friendly.
Our system also fails to honor the law. Our archaic laws are entirely out of synch with the needs of a dynamic labor market and thus are sporadically enforced. We need a solution that restores the rule of law, providing the opportunity for undocumented immigrants to make things right by paying a penalty and proving over a probationary period that they will work for the privilege of American citizenship.
That also will allow us to separate out those few who have committed serious criminal offenses who should be deported from the majority whose only offense has been a violation of civil immigration law, for whom a fine is an appropriate penalty. We're not advocating for amnesty, but for accountability. The only real amnesty on the table is the status quo.
Thankfully, Republican leaders in Congress have shown signs that immigration reform including further securing our borders and giving aspiring Americans the opportunity to earn legal status is a priority. They must move forward, and they will do so with support among voters across the spectrum, including conservatives and evangelicals as polls show.
Here is the original post:
Mark Vega: Immigration reform would help our economy, community
House Democrats havent launched a discharge petition on immigration just yet, but reform-friendly Republicans are already rejecting the idea.
Three House Republicans who have endorsed the Democrats comprehensive immigration reform legislation all said they will not sign onto any effort from Democrats to push a floor vote.
No, theres just no way, said Rep. David Valadao (R-Calif.), who co-sponsored the Democratic immigration bill last fall. To play politics that way is not the way to get something this serious done.
(Also on POLITICO: Tax plan could hit immigrants)
A spokesman for Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) said she would not sign one. And Rep. Jeff Denham (R-Calif.) also said he is a no on a discharge petition.
I am interested in working through the committee process, he said. Im going to continue to pressure and push my conference on coming to a solution and offering other bills.
The three lawmakers are the only House Republicans who have co-sponsored legislation spearheaded by Democrats that largely takes from the Senate-passed bill, but scales back its border-security provisions.
A discharge petition is a procedural gambit that allows the minority party in the House in this case, Democrats to force a vote on the floor over the wishes of the majority leadership. Very few discharge petitions actually succeed, since it is considered a breach of party loyalty to sign onto an effort from the opposing party.
(CARTOONS: Matt Wuerker on immigration)
Of course, securing the necessary 218 signatures on a discharge petition wouldnt be the only goal of Democrats. Lawmakers are also hoping that the existence of a discharge petition on immigration will create enough pressure on Republicans to force the leadership to start moving reform bills on the House floor.
Excerpt from:
A new debate has arisen among prominent conservatives over whether passing an immigration overhaul would be good or bad for Americans, with columnist George Will weighing in on the pro-reform side and talk-show host Laura Ingraham arguing against. This is a good thing. Until now, few prominent conservatives have been willing to venture into the pro-immigration reform camp, which meant that the arguments advanced in favor of reform tended to be dismissed by grassroots conservatives. Now maybe the actual arguments will get proper attention.
Three issues are central to the debate: border security, assimilation and the economic effects of immigration. Those on the right who oppose reform focus especially on the first two. But the facts dont bear out hand-wringing on either one.
The border has never been so secure. The flow of illegal immigration into this country is at a 40-year low, and deportation rates are higher than at any time in our history. Conservatives can and should claim some credit for this. We now spend more on securing our borders than we do on all other federal law-enforcement efforts combined. And President Obama has deported more illegal immigrants than any president before him: 2 million since he took office.
Recently, in his column, Will made the case that conservatives may be underestimating the assimilative power of the American experience. In response, Ingraham argued that 20.8 percent of Americans dont speak English at home, noting that the percentage is up about 3 points since 2000. But her data dont actually make the case that present-day immigrants, mostly Hispanics, are assimilating at slower rates than previous groups, as she apparently believes.
Immigrants from Germans and Italians of earlier years to Chinese and Mexicans today have always chosen to speak their mother tongue at home in the first generation. German immigrants not only spoke German at home, but also supported German language education in public schools where large concentrations of German speakers lived. And early in our history, a vote in Congress to print the Congressional Record in both English and German narrowly failed. As late as 1980, more than three million Americans spoke either Italian or German at home.
Today, immigrants and their children make up 25 percent of the American population. It should be no surprise then that many of these families speak their native tongue at home, especially because so many of these families live in multi-generation households.
What really matters the true test of assimilation is what happens in the second and third generations. And here, Will is right. English is the primary language of second- and third-generation immigrants, including Hispanics. English is the language they use primarily or exclusively at work (93 percent, according to surveys by Pew Research), and it is the language for news and entertainment among Hispanics, increasingly even for immigrants.
As for the economic impact of immigration, Will has all of the facts on his side. Immigration provides a net positive increase to GDP. No reputable economist disagrees; the question is only how large. Without immigrants and a growing population, our economy will stagnate, especially as the population ages.
Ingraham points to the economic boom of the 1980s and 1990s, ignoring the inconvenient truth that those decades were among the highest in illegal immigration, which peaked in the mid-90s. Immigrants came by the millions during that period to take jobs Americans shunned in agriculture, meat processing and the service and hospitality industries. Those jobs still go wanting, despite high unemployment.
The majority of Republicans favor immigration reform, including a path to legalization for the more than 11 million illegal immigrants living here now. Conservatives need an open and honest debate on this important issue but until recently, very few conservatives have been willing to wade into the rough waters. As one who did so early and consistently, I welcome other conservatives to join the growing ranks of those of us making a conservative case for the importance of reforming our broken immigration system.
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