Thursday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed all-star panelist Clint Brewer in-studio to comment upon the recent shipment of illegal migrants to Martha’s Vinyard and sanctuary cities.
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Anyone who follows politics is accustomed to the overuse of the word “reform.” It is almost always depicted as a highly desirable goal that will sweep away bad precedents and usher in a new era of smarter government policy.
Reform is often a good and necessary thing. But there are few words left more open to interpretation. Reform, depending on who is suggesting the change, can mean entirely different things even when applied to the same issue. This is especially true when it comes to immigration.
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Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough rejected another Democratic effort to include immigration reform in President Joe Biden’s spending bill.
MacDonough’s ruling, which came late Thursday, is Democrats’ latest setback in their bid to overhaul the nation’s immigration system via the reconciliation bill. She rejected two bids earlier this year to include a pathway to citizenship in the package, ruling that the provisions did not meet the criteria to be included in the filibuster-proof legislation.
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Several immigration provisions tucked inside the Democrats’ spending bill are set to greatly expand the number of legal, high-skilled immigrants admitted to the U.S., handing large tech companies a major victory.
The provisions, included in the $1.75 trillion Build Back Better Act, propose a number of changes to the immigration system intended to help relieve the green card backlog and admit more immigrants. The bill proposes “recapturing” green cards that were authorized but never actually issued due to administrative complications, as well as exempting visa applicants from numerical and country limits if the applicants pay a fee.
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Business, political, and religious leaders are urging Florida Senators Marco Rubio and Rick Scott to take up immigration reform legislation which would add security to around 490,000 immigrants in Florida.
Democratic Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer said at a panel hosted by the American Business Immigration Coalition he is urging Florida’s senators to take up bipartisan legislation offering a pathway to citizenship for children, brought here by illegal aliens, classified under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) status. Dyer noted almost 20 percent of Orlando population was born in another country and their status as workers drives Central Florida’s economy.
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In an interview with former aide Sarah Isgur and Steve Hayes of The Dispatch to promote his new book that features portraits of immigrants, former President George W. Bush called for ‘immigration reform’ that keeps ‘Dreamers’ in the US and provides a path to citizenship for illegal aliens currently in the U.S., criticized Republicans who support ‘laws based on Anglo-Saxon traditions,’ and claimed ‘White Anglo Saxon Protestantism’ is exclusionary.
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On March 16, President Joe Biden opened the door to changing Senate rules requiring 60 votes in order to advance legislation, telling ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos “democracy is having a hard time functioning.”
When asked if he had to choose between “preserving the filibuster, and advancing your agenda,” Biden’s answer was “Yes.”
Biden continued, “But here’s the choice: I don’t think that you have to eliminate the filibuster, you have to do it what it used to be when I first got to the Senate back in the old days…You had to stand up and command the floor, you had to keep talking.”
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The Ninth-Circuit Court of Appeals, which has routinely blocked Trump administration rule changes, gave the administration a win when it lifted two injunctions blocking implementation of the administration’s changes to the public charge rule.
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by Rachel Bovard President Trump on Thursday rolled out his administration’s first, substantive take on immigration reform, and the reactions have been what you’d expect. Democrats and some Republicans immediately panned the proposal because it doesn’t provide amnesty to recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (otherwise known as President Obama’s illegal executive amnesty), or to anyone else. Republicans, in general, were more circumspect. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) gave a noncommittal response, with a nod toward the dispute he is currently embroiled in with Democrats, who continue to block the administration’s request for more humanitarian funding at the border. (Yes, the same party who lambasts the president for his supposed lack of humanitarian care for migrants also refuses to give him funding to do exactly that.) But a review of the plan itself, which deals largely with the legal immigration system, suggests that it fills a critical role for Republicans. For years, the GOP has run on “border security first,” and then a “merit-based” immigration with very little agreement on the specifics of what those terms mean. Past Republican proposals, rather, have come in the form of massive, multifaceted plans which die horrible public deaths due to their frontward concessions on amnesty. (Recall the doomed…
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President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful, bold” immigration overhaul plan has at least three backers in Tennessee’s congressional delegation. U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), and U.S. Reps. Dr. Scott DesJarlais (R-TN-04) and Dr. Mark Green (R-TN-07) issued statements backing the president. Trump this week rolled out a plan to “transform America’s immigration system” from one of random entry to a meritocracy, The Tennessee Star reported Friday. The president acknowledged that his proposal wouldn’t immediately pass and would have to wait until after the 2020 election. Provisions include: legal immigrants entering for jobs would rise from 12 percent to 57 percent; family-based immigration would decrease from two-thirds to one-third; asylum and diversity visas would decrease from 22 percent to 10 percent; and priority would be given to spouses, children and parents, but not extended family. Regarding the plan, DesJarlais said, “The President’s plan is a well-thought-out, sensible one that would end the chaos at the border and across the United States, because of weak border security, bad laws and judicial decisions. As opposed to the random lottery we have right now, we need a merit-based immigration system that attracts high-skilled workers who will not displace American citizens or become a public…
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by George Rasley In another act of Trump jujitsu, President Trump has turned the tables on the Democrats and open borders RINOs by signing an Executive Order restating the Administration’s intention to “rigorously enforce our immigration laws” while affording Congress an opportunity to address family separation. Saying it is “It is unfortunate that Congress’s failure to act and court orders have put the Administration in the position of separating alien families to effectively enforce the law.” The Executive Order stated that it is the policy of this Administration to maintain family unity, including by detaining alien families together where appropriate and consistent with law and available resources. The Order then stated, “The Secretary of Homeland Security (Secretary), shall, to the extent permitted by law and subject to the availability of appropriations, maintain custody of alien families during the pendency of any criminal improper entry or immigration proceedings involving their members.” The President also directed the Attorney General to take the necessary legal steps to address the root cause of the problem, which was a consent decrees in a 1997 immigration case. “The Attorney General shall promptly file a request with the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California…
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Sen. Marco Rubio said Wednesday that the Senate needs to have a “plan B” if comprehensive immigration reform fails. The Florida Republican explained that he believes the visa lottery system and chain migration can be dealt with in a way that attracts bipartisan support, but he said if not, the Senate needs to act on DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), those brought to the U.S. illegally as children, and on border security.
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Diane Black appeared on Fox Business’ After the Bell with Melissa Francis Monday to discuss the ongoing immigration reform negotiations. As an introduction to the segment, Francis aired Nancy Pelosi’s recent claim that President Trump’s ‘America First’ immigration framework is a ploy the “make America white again.” Francis asked, “You know, I always wonder: Does it impact the negotiation when politicians go out to the camera and say things like that, or do you understand that she’s sort of talking to her base, and everybody has this rhetoric, and when you come back together, it’s like that didn’t happen. What’s it really like behind closed doors?” Black replied, “I’m just going to tell you my experience with Ms. Pelosi, and that is that she has a pretty good heavy hand with her own conference. But I know behind the scenes, with having dealt with her own members, that they are not all in agreement with her. And I think they are getting worn out with the kind of political partisanship that she just spews all over the place. Most people that are rational people here willing to sit down and talk about this issue of DACA and of securing our borders.” The Republican…
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Americans strongly back giving illegal immigrant “Dreamers” a pathway to citizenship – but a new poll found they also strongly back the other changes President Trump is pushing to build a border wall system, eliminate the visa lottery and curtail the chain of family migration. The Harvard-Harris Poll, taken in the run-up to the government shutdown, even found huge support for cutting the level of legal immigration, which stands at more than 1 million a year, to less than half that.
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by Printus LeBlanc Every day the mainstream media is hysterical about the DACA, the Dreamers (because American kids aren’t allowed to have dreams), and Amnesty. They will spit out numbers and shady poll results trying to paint a rosy picture of illegal immigration. But a small amount of research will show they are spitting out lies to achieve the desired outcome, the importation of millions of progressive voters. To quote a famous rap group, “Don’t Believe the Hype.” One of the biggest lies being told about immigration is how many illegal immigrants are in the country. The media often touts the 11-12 million number put out by the Census Bureau. The Census Bureau reaches the number through a flawed method. It counts on a survey done by the federal government. If we are to believe the liberal logic that illegal immigrants are “in the shadows,” then the number cannot be right because people “in the shadows” do not voluntarily speak to people working for the government. Remember, they’re “in the shadows.” The actual number is between 20-30 million illegal immigrants. The figure comes from a report titled The Underground Labor Force Is Rising To The Surface. The report was put together in 2005…
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WASHINGTON — As he rejected a bipartisan compromise Thursday to resolve the standoff over so-called Dreamers, President Donald Trump asked participants in an Oval Office meeting why the U.S. should accept immigrants from “shithole countries” in Africa, according to two people briefed on the meeting. “What do we want Haitians here for?” the president asked, according to two people who were at the meeting.
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An advocacy organization that favors a reduction in immigration began airing ads Thursday highlighting what it believes would be the impact an amnesty would have on migration to the United States. Using a chalkboard, the ad explains how immigrants and new citizens become eligible to sponsor members of their extended families for immigration into the United States. It sets off “a potentially never-ending chain, all possible from just one amnesty for one person,” the ad by NumbersUSA states.
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