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Zuckerberg: Immigration ‘One of Biggest Civil Rights’ Issues of Our Time (+video)

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Photo Credit: Guillaume PaumierWith the movement on immigration reform at a standstill in Congress, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other top Silicon Valley executives joined together on Wednesday to urge lawmakers to press ahead with their work on fixing the country’s immigration system.

Zuckerberg, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and Dropbox CEO Andrew Houston were on hand to help kick off a “hackathon” event at LinkedIn’s headquarters, where a group of 20 young immigrants who came to the country illegally as children, often called “Dreamers,” will spend the next 25 hours coding Web tools aimed at advocating for immigration reform.

“I think this is one of the biggest civil rights issues of our time,” Zuckerberg told reporters and the room of young coders from across the U.S. “We’re at a pretty critical moment in the movement right now where it’s really important to keep pushing ahead.”

The three tech executives, along with Groupon co-founder Andrew Mason and immigration rights advocate Jose Antonio Vargas, will judge the young immigrants’ final work on Thursday afternoon and determine which project wins for “best design,” “best advocacy app” and “best storytelling app.”

FWD.us, the political advocacy group co-founded by Zuckerberg that’s funded by many of the tech industry’s most powerful executives, is hosting the event to show Congress that it’s not backing down from its push for passing immigration legislation that includes a path to citizenship for the more than 11 million immigrants living illegally in the United States.

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Homeland Security: Immigrant Family Members Of U.S. Military Members Will No Longer Be Deported

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Photo Credit: opposingviews.comMillions of members of the U.S military were born abroad. Many of these people have undocumented family members living in the United States.

For years, U.S. military service member advocates have argued that the nation’s current deportation policy often places undue stress on these members. The idea of deporting the loved ones of someone serving their country just doesn’t quite seem right.

Today, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security made an announcement that should alleviate some of these stresses. Undocumented family members of U.S. military members will no longer be deported. Instead, they will be given a “parole in place” permit that will allow them to apply for permanent legal status while remaining in the U.S.

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McCain: We’ll Try to Pass Immigration Changes After GOP Primaries

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Photo Credit: AFPSen. John McCain (R-AZ) gave the clearest indication that proponents of comprehensive immigration reform may make their final–and strongest–push to get legislation passed next year after House Republicans make it through their primaries.

“I think conventional wisdom is that time is not on our side,” McCain told reporters on Monday after an event in Chicago. “But there are a number of members of Congress who have primaries and when those primaries are done, they may be more inclined to address the issue of comprehensive immigration reform.”

President Barack Obama has urged Congress to pass immigration reform legislation this year. House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) is reportedly going to bring legislation to the floor within the next month and other House Republican leaders have indicated support for piecemeal pieces of legislation that can make it to conference with the Senate, where proponents and opponents of immigration reform had said a pathway to citizenship will prevail.

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Rubio Now Opposes Going to Conference with Senate Immigration Bill

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Photo Credit: Reuters A spokesman for Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), a member of the Senate’s “Gang of Eight,” told Breitbart News exclusively on Saturday that the House should not pass individual piecemeal immigration bills in a “ruse” to get to a conference committee that would result in a comprehensive immigration bill.

“At this point, the most realistic way to make progress on immigration would be through a series of individual bills,” Rubio spokesman Alex Conant said in an email. “Any effort to use a limited bill as a ruse to trigger a conference that would then produce a comprehensive bill would be counterproductive. Furthermore, any such effort would fail, because any single senator can and will block conference unless such conference is specifically instructed to limit the conference to only the issue dealt with in the underlying bill.”

In taking such a stance, Rubio has now publicly opposed the procedural mechanism through which House GOP leadership and Senate Democratic leadership had planned to try to slip a backdoor amnesty through Congress and save the Senate bill.

Technically speaking, the House could pass any bill or group of bills related to immigration to move to conference. Several immigration bills are ready to be taken up on the House floor, having already made it through their respective committees. If such an immigration bill, or group of bills, passes the House, the Republican leadership could take the bill or group of bills to the Senate and open a conference committee. A conference committee is a formal negotiating body where the House and the Senate will each send key negotiators, or conferees, to argue with each other about both the Senate’s Gang of Eight bill and whatever bill or bills the House brings to the table.

As Breitbart News first reported in July, conservatives have expressed worry about such a committee. Endorsing the House’s piecemeal approach is not enough to stop the Senate’s Gang of Eight bill as congressional leaders in both parties and both chambers of Congress could slip the comprehensive Senate bill past everyone through procedural trickery.

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House Republicans Work Immigration Behind Scenes

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Immigration overhaul legislation has been dormant in the House for months, but a few Republicans are working behind the scenes to advance it at a time the Capitol is immersed in a partisan brawl over government spending and President Barack Obama’s health care law.

The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Bob Goodlatte, has been discussing possible legal status for the estimated 11 million immigrants living in the U.S. illegally. He’s also been working with House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, a fellow Virginia Republican, on a bill offering citizenship to immigrants brought illegally to the U.S. as children.

Reps. Raul Labrador, R-Idaho, and Ted Poe, R-Texas, are working on a plan to create a visa program allowing more lower-skilled workers into the country.

Goodlatte and the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Rep. Mike McCaul, R-Texas, hold out hopes for floor action by late October on a series of immigration bills that already have passed their committees.

“I would think that would be the next agenda item in the queue after we’re done with this mess,” McCaul said this past week, referring to bitter divisions over the health law, the level of government spending and the growing federal debt.

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For Migrants, New Land of Opportunity Is Mexico

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Photo Credit: Andrea Bruce

Photo Credit: Andrea Bruce

Mexico, whose economic woes have pushed millions of people north, is increasingly becoming an immigrant destination. The country’s documented foreign-born population nearly doubled between 2000 and 2010, and officials now say the pace is accelerating as broad changes in the global economy create new dynamics of migration.

Rising wages in China and higher transportation costs have made Mexican manufacturing highly competitive again, with some projections suggesting it is already cheaper than China for many industries serving the American market. Europe is sputtering, pushing workers away. And while Mexico’s economy is far from trouble free, its growth easily outpaced the giants of the hemisphere — the United States, Canada and Brazil — in 2011 and 2012, according to International Monetary Fund data, making the country more attractive to fortune seekers worldwide.

The new arrivals range in class from executives to laborers; Mexican officials said Friday that residency requests had grown by 10 percent since November, when a new law meant to streamline the process took effect. And they are coming from nearly everywhere.

Guillaume Pace saw his native France wilting economically, so with his new degree in finance, he moved to Mexico City.

Lee Hwan-hee made the same move from South Korea for an internship, while Spanish filmmakers, Japanese automotive executives and entrepreneurs from the United States and Latin America arrive practically daily — pursuing dreams, living well and frequently succeeding.

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New Boss at ICE Ineligible for Job, Says Critic

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

The acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement—who oversees the nation’s second-largest federal investigative agency—may not be eligible for the permanent position under laws set up to keep politics out of the agency, according to one former high-level employee.

When John Sandweg, a former Arizona criminal defense attorney and associate of outgoing Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, was named acting director of ICE, several critics questioned his credentials. Some told FoxNews.com his appointment seemed to be political, and others said the agency needed a leader who had come up through the ranks.

“Given that there are literally dozens of people within ICE who have more experience in management/law enforcement and meet these qualifications, there is no excuse for placing Mr. Sandweg as acting director of ICE,” said Anthony Ho, who was assistant special agent in charge of ICE’s San Francisco division before retiring in December.

Ho noted that the 2002 law which established the agency, then known as Bureau of Border Security, explicitly requires that the director “shall have a minimum of 5 years professional experience in law enforcement, and a minimum of 5 years of management experience.” The law was designed specifically to prevent the agency from becoming politicized, Ho said.

It was not clear if the same requirements apply to an acting director, but one source told FoxNews.com it was likely the intent that they would, otherwise an acting director could be installed indefinitely simply to get around them.

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Sebelius Says Amnesty Needed to Increase Obamacare Enrollment

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Speaking Thursday at an event in Philadelphia, hosted by a Latino community service group, Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Kathleen Sebelius revealed that the success of ObamaCare is dependent upon the passage of comprehensive immigration reform and amnesty.

Susan Jones at CNS News reported Friday that, when asked if the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) will help “undocumented individuals,” Sebelius responded that it would not, and that this is the reason why immigration reform is so important.

“Well, the (Obamacare) bill is crafted in such a way that those who are undocumented will not have access to the tax credits or shopping in the (health insurance) marketplace,” Sebelius told Latinos at an event sponsored by Congreso. “That has been limited, which is, frankly, why — another very keen reason why we need comprehensive immigration reform.”

Sebelius went on to say, “Unfortunately, you can’t fix – we won’t fix the immigration system, unfortunately, through the health care bill, but I think having the immigration bill that passed the Senate, pass the House, would be a huge step.”

The immigration bill that passed the Senate would allow at least 11 million illegal immigrants a path to citizenship. First, however, they would gain provisional legal status.

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Boehner Super-PAC Aides Push Senate Amnesty Bill

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Photo Credit: Business Insider

Photo Credit: Business Insider

Senior GOP aides of a super PAC linked to Speaker John Boehner are lobbying House Republicans to pass the Senate “Gang of Eight” immigration bill, legislation that Boehner has said he will not bring to the House floor.

The lobbying effort is coming under the umbrella of the American Action Network, a nonprofit 501(c)(4) “action tank” led by former senator Norm Coleman, which is touting the “major positive economic impact” of the Senate bill in e-mails sent to individual House Republican offices.

AAN is housed in the same office as the Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC associated with Boehner, and the two organizations share senior aides, including Brian O. Walsh, the president of both organizations, and Dan Conston, the spokesman for both.

Boehner spoke at a fundraiser for CLN earlier this summer and also headlined the organization’s inaugural event. The group’s website has posted links to numerous news stories that refer to the group as “Boehner’s” super PAC.

The AAN’s e-mail, sent to GOP offices, touts the number of jobs the group estimates the Senate bill would create for the congressional district and state of that office. The group also released an embeddable “widget” that allows users to find out how many jobs the Senate bill would create in the district of their representative.

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House Republicans Feel Summer Recess Heat on Immigration

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Photo Credit: APHouse Republicans are facing heavy pressure from both sides of the immigration debate as they return to their home districts for August recess with no clear indication as to how they’ll vote on the issue.

The decision to pass comprehensive immigration reform has essentially been in the hands of the Republican-controlled House since the Democrat-led Senate passed such a bill in June.

House Republicans were under pressure before they even left their Capitol Hill offices to start the five-week recess, which is traditionally dedicated to face-to-face talks with hometown voters.

The American Federation of Government Employees sent a letter Tuesday to House lawmakers urging them not to work with senators on their “dangerous” bill.

Among the major concerns is that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is not equipped to process the potential onslaught of new applications.

Read more from this story HERE.