Politico -- CAMBRIDGE, Md. — The House Republican leadership is trying to sell their colleagues on a series of broad immigration principles, including a path to legal status for those here illegally.
Speaker John Boehner’s leadership team introduced the principles at their annual policy retreat here. Top Republicans circulated a tightly held one-page memo titled “standards for immigration reform” toward the tail-end of a day that include strategy conversations about Obamacare, the economy and the national debt.
In the private meeting where the language was introduced, Boehner (R-Ohio) told Republicans that the standards are “as far as we are willing to go.”
”Nancy Pelosi said yesterday that for her caucus, it is a special path to citizenship or nothing,” Boehner said, according to a source in the room. “If Democrats insist on that, then we are not going to get anywhere this year.”
Boehner said the standards represent “a fair, principled way for us to solve this issue.”
The strategy marks a shift for House Republicans. In 2013, Boehner’s chamber ignored the bipartisan immigration reform bill passed by the Senate. But toward the end of last year and early this year, Boehner, Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) began hashing out this approach to rally Republicans toward reform.
“It’s important to act on immigration reform because we’re focused on jobs and economic growth, and this is about jobs and growth,” Boehner said in his pitch in the closed meeting. “Reform is also about our national security. The safety and security of our nation depends on our ability to secure our border, enforce our laws, improve channels for legal entry to the country, and identify who is here illegally.”
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Blog author’s comments – What the Republican ‘leadership’ is doing is insane. Just when they have a good chance of both retaining the House and perhaps winning control of the Senate, they now believe that passing an immigration bill will help the party and the country. Instead of continuing to campaign on what Obama and the Democrats have already done to America with Obamacare, they take the focus off of that and want to pass an immigration reform bill which the majority of the people do not want.
This could well be the end of the Republican Party. We haven't seen the GOP act much like the opposition party yet. Whenever some Republicans do pop up in opposition, they get cut down by other Republicans. We already have a pathway for the illegals to citizenship, follow the laws which are already in place. What the Republicans are doing is fantastic for the Democrats. If the House bill passes, the Democrats will be well on their way to a permanent majority. But for whatever reason the Republican Party leadership cannot see that.
Boehner comes up with the term "standards for immigration reform", as if these 'reforms' need to be born. The country has had immigration standards for over a century -- and have worked up well until illegal border crossing started being ignored. My grandparents and great-grandparents had to obey those standards -- along with millions of other legal entrants. The only new "standard for immigration" needed is to enforce illegal border crossing protection.
ReplyDeleteCanada is smart. They only allowed successful people; business professionals, the college educated et cetera, to enter the country and obtain citizenship. Whom do the USA allow in? -- the Russian mafia, pro-sharia law Moslems, the uneducated ignorant masses, etc.
Boehner, Cantor, Ryan, etc. need to be read to from the Book.
Zebebiah Ruppalainen
Zebebiah Ruppalainen,
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with your entire comment. Too bad there are not more thinkers in Washington like you, the country would be in so much better shape.