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Ted Cruz Lays Down Gauntlet on Immigration Bill (+video)

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Photo Credit: US News By Daniel Horowitz. As we’ve noted over the past few weeks, there are dozens of systemic flaws in the approach of the gang’s immigration bill. But there are two overarching problems with all of these proposals: 1) the legalization (and certainly the suspension of deportations) is immediate and certain; the enforcement measures are later and tenuous 2) it is incontrovertibly clear that granting such a low-skilled population a path to citizenship, when coupled with chain migration and birthright citizenship, will constitute a demonstrative public charge.

Once those two issues are addressed, there will be a broad consensus on how to deal with those already here illegally. At tomorrow’s Judiciary Committee markup, Senator Ted Cruz plans to throw down that gauntlet to the Democrats and Republican gang members. If they truly desire a solution to this problem, which was largely created by some of the members on the committee, they would sign onto Cruz’s amendments.

Ted Cruz will introduce an amendment stipulating that no legalization can commence until the Secure Fence Act of 2006 and the biometric US-Visit exit-entry system are implemented. They can have their amnesty, but the laws already on the books must be followed before that process begins. Read more from this story HERE.

Ted Cruz Seeks to Ban Illegal Immigrants in U.S. from Citizenship

By Rebekah Metzler. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, a newly elected Republican with a penchant for making headlines, filed an amendment that would bar undocumented immigrants currently living in the United States from ever earning citizenship.

There are an estimated 11 million people living in the country illegally, and a bipartisan immigration reform measure would create a pathway to citizenship over the course of 13 years by requiring those people to pay penalties and back taxes, as well as learn English. Conservatives opposed to reform decry the path as amnesty, but Democrats say they will not support reform that does not cope with the immigrants already living in the U.S.

Cruz also filed amendments that he says would “strengthen border security measures; reform the high-skilled temporary worker program; modernize, streamline and expand legal immigration; and prohibit federal, state or local entitlement benefits for those here illegally.” Read more from this story HERE.

Destroying a Nation: Gang of 8 Wants to Give Legal Status to 57 Million

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Photo Credit: Daily CallerAn analysis of future immigration flow released Friday by Alabama Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions shows that more than 32 million immigrants would receive legal status over the next decade and an additional 25 million would be granted non-immigrant work visas under the Gang of Eight’s immigration bill.

On a conference call with reporters about the analysis Sessions explained that number of legal immigrants over the next decade “exceeds the population of California, our largest state, and will have a very significant impact on our economy and the American people.”

According to the analysis presented by the senator, the high immigration estimate derived from visa program proposals in a revised 867-page bill crafted by a bipartisan group of eight senators shows that the bill would vastly increase the level of future “low-skill” immigration.

“[O]ver the first decade, the total number [of legal status] granted will be well over 32 million (not taking into account chain migration from increased legal flow),” the analysis reads. “Adding in all the various categories of nonimmigrant work visas, the number climbs to more than 57 million.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Rubio: Immigration Bill Doomed; Homosexual Push Continues

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Photo Credit: Reuters Marco Rubio: Gang of Eight’s immigration bill can’t pass the House

By Seung Min Kim. Sen. Marco Rubio acknowledged Tuesday on a conservative radio talk show that the Gang of Eight’s comprehensive immigration reform bill won’t likely pass the Republican-led House.

The comments from Rubio, perhaps the most influential congressional Republican on immigration, illustrate the challenges facing the prospects for reform after months of private negotiations by a bipartisan coalition of senators produced a wide-ranging, 844-page bill.

“The bill that’s in place right now probably can’t pass the House,” Rubio told Mike Gallagher, a nationally syndicated talk show host. “It will have to be adjusted, because people are very suspicious about the willingness of the government to enforce the laws now.”

He continued: “That is a very legitimate suspicion, it’s one that I share, and if there’s anything we can do to make [the bill] even tighter … that’s exactly what we should be working on.”

In a separate radio appearance Tuesday, Rubio elaborated on the challenges facing the legislation in the House, saying the enforcement mechanisms in the Senate legislation would need to be much stronger in order to pass the lower chamber. Read more from this story HERE.

Push to Include Gay Couples in Immigration Bill

By Julia Preston. This has been a good year for gay rights advocates — with public opinion shifting in their favor and same-sex marriage advancing in the states — but not when it comes to immigration.

An 844-page bill introduced in the Senate in mid-April by a bipartisan group of eight lawmakers includes measures to make legal immigration easier for highly skilled immigrants, migrant farmworkers and those living here illegally. It has no provisions that would help foreigners who are same-sex partners of American citizens to become legal permanent residents.

Gay advocates were sharply disappointed to find that same-sex couples were excluded from the legislation, since the Democrats who wrote it included two of their most consistent champions, Senators Charles E. Schumer of New York and Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the second highest-ranking Senate Democrat. Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the Democrat who is chairman of the Judiciary Committee, where the bill is under consideration, has offered, since as far back as 2003, a separate measure that would allow immigrants in long-term same-sex relationships to obtain residency with a green card.

But in the lengthy closed-door negotiations that produced the overhaul proposal, the four Republicans in the bipartisan group made it clear early on that they did not want to include such a hot-button issue in a bill that would be a challenge to sell to their party even without it, according to Senate staff members. The Republicans are Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Jeff Flake and John McCain of Arizona, and Marco Rubio of Florida. Read more from this story HERE.

Gay rights push threatens immigration deal

By Carrie Budoff Brown. The most serious threat to bipartisan immigration reform doesn’t involve border security or guest workers or even the path to citizenship. It’s about gay rights.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) has told advocates that he will offer an amendment during the bill markup next week allowing gay Americans to sponsor their foreign-born partners for green cards, just as heterosexual couples can. The measure is likely to pass because Democrats face pressure from gay rights advocates to deal with it in committee, rather than on the Senate floor, where the odds of passage are far less favorable.

But by doing so, Republicans warn that Democrats will tank the whole bill.

“It will virtually guarantee that it won’t pass,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), a member of the Gang of Eight negotiating group, told POLITICO in a brief interview. “This issue is a difficult enough issue as it is. I respect everyone’s views on it. But ultimately, if that issue is injected into this bill, the bill will fail and the coalition that helped put it together will fall apart.”

As the legislation moves through the Judiciary Committee and on to the Senate floor, many people will make pronouncements about things that must be kept in or kept out of the bill — but few issues worry the Gang of Eight as much as same-sex partner rights. Read more from this story HERE.

Immigration Officials Holding Two Fellow Students of Boston Bombing Suspect

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Photo Credit: Fox NewsTwo people seen in a photo with suspected Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in New York’s famed Times Square are being held by authorities on administrative immigration violations, Fox News has confirmed.

The two men were identified to Fox News as Dias Kadyrbayev and Azamat Tazhayakov, both citizens of Kazakhstan. They can be seen standing next to Tsarnaev in a photo believed to have been taken in April 2012 in Times Square, which authorities suspect was another of the bombers’ intended targets.

Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov were arrested April 20 — five days after the attack at the marathon — at the Hidden Brook apartments by the FBI and Homeland Security in New Bedford Mass., and they are being detained by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement at the Suffolk County House of Corrections in Boston because of problems relating to their student visas, sources told Fox News.

New York City officials held a news conference Thursday confirming that the city was another target following the bombings in Boston, which killed three and wounded more than 200 near the finish line of the Boston race.

“We learned through the Joint Terrorist Task Force that the Boston Marathon bombers had planned to travel to Manhattan to detonate remaining bombs in Times Square,” New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said, though it is unclear when this information was relayed to New York City officials.

Read more from this story HERE.

Holder: "Amnesty is a Civil Right" and Other Idiocy (+video)

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Photo Credit: DonkeyHoteyAmnesty “is a matter of civil and human rights,” Eric Holder claims. If that’s the case, then amnesty opponents are a bunch of Bull Connors.

Holder stated in remarks in an April 24 speech to the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund MALDEF) Awards Gala that “creating a mechanism for [illegal aliens] to earn citizenship and move out of the shadows… is a matter of civil and human rights.”

Let’s just tear down the fence and hand out EBT cards at the border, and bring the American experiment to an end.

We used to celebrate Rosa Parks, an American citizen, for defying segregation and demanding equal treatment as an American citizen. Now, Holder drapes non-citizens in the mantle of civil rights, even though they are driving down American wages — especially those of low-skilled blacks.

Three members of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights recently wrote to the Congressional Black Caucus, warning that amnesty “will likely disproportionately harm lower-skilled African-Americans by making it more difficult for them to obtain employment and depressing their wages when they do obtain employment.”

Read more from this story HERE.

The Problem isn't Just Illegal Immigration, it's Legal Immigration, too

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The people of Boston are no longer being terrorized by the Marathon bombers, but amnesty supporters sure are.

On CNN’s “State of the Union” last weekend, Sen. Lindsey Graham’s response to the Boston Marathon bombers being worthless immigrants who hate America — one of whom the FBI cleared even after being tipped off by Russia — was to announce: “The fact that we could not track him has to be fixed.”

Track him? How about not admitting him as an immigrant?

As if it’s a defense, we’re told Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (of the Back Bay Tsarnaevs) were disaffected “losers” — the word used by their own uncle — who couldn’t make it in America. Their father had already returned to Russia. Tamerlan had dropped out of college, been arrested for domestic violence and said he had no American friends. Dzhokhar was failing most of his college courses. All of them were on welfare…

My thought is, maybe we should consider admitting immigrants who can succeed in America, rather than deadbeats.

Read more from this story HERE.

Rand Paul & Boehner Disagree on Whether to Delay Immigration Bill Due to Bombings

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Photo Credit: Reuters

Congressional advocates of comprehensive U.S. immigration legislation were diverted into a sometimes testy debate on Monday over whether the measure should be delayed because of questions arising from the Boston Marathon bombing allegedly carried out by two immigrant brothers.

The idea of holding up the legislation gained some ground with the support of U.S. Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, a prominent Republican who in the past supported immigration reform. However, the highest-ranking Republican in Washington, U.S. House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner of Ohio said he saw no reason for the bombings to delay the debate.

Florida Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican sponsor whose continued support is crucial to the bill’s survival, took a middle-ground position, saying in a statement that he disagreed with “those who say that the terrorist attack in Boston has no bearing on the immigration debate” but he added that immigration reform could and should address any “flaws” exposed by the attack in Boston.

Rubio’s remarks came as some conservative commentators and lawmakers continued to seize on the Boston bombings as evidence that an immigration bill should move more slowly in Congress.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, who was captured Friday night and charged on Monday in the deadly marathon bombing, was a naturalized U.S. citizen. His brother, Tamerlan, 26, who died after a shootout with police early Friday, also was in the country legally and had applied for U.S. citizenship. The brothers had immigrated to the United States a decade ago with their family, which is from Chechnya.

Read more from this story HERE.

Amnesty Bill to Include a 50 Percent Increase of Legal Immigrants

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Photo Credit: Western Journalism

Not only will 12 to 20 million illegal aliens enjoy new found legality and freedom to roam and work within America if the senate amnesty S744 bill passes; the senators added a whopping 50 percent additional legal immigration number to the bill.

They added those numbers in light of the fact that 47 million Americans exist on food stamps because they cannot secure jobs.

Nearly 40 percent of African-Americans cannot secure jobs. Our working poor stand in welfare lines, food kitchens and food banks. We import over one million legal immigrants annually more than all other countries combined. Our country cannot handle those numbers, but Congress expects to pass yet another amnesty and add even more millions of people to America.

Since 1965, the Immigration Reform Act started the flood of humanity into America at 1.1 million year after year and decade after decade. However, this new bill piles insult onto injury.

Washington Bureau journalist Brian Bennett said, “The U.S. admits about 1 million legal immigrants per year, more than any other country. That number could jump by more than 50% over the next decade under the terms of the immigration reform bill that a bipartisan group of senators expects to unveil as early as Tuesday. The impact would be felt nationwide, but areas that already have large immigrant communities would probably see much of the increase.”

Read more from this story HERE.

‘Amnesty Is Amnesty’

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Photo Credit: AP

Law enforcement and federal immigration officials joined Sens. Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.) and David Vitter (R., La.) on Capitol Hill Thursday to blast the “Gang of Eight’s” immigration reform legislation, describing it as “amnesty” that would put public safety at risk.

“Amnesty is amnesty. You call it what you want to call it,” said Sam Page, the sheriff of Rockingham County, N.C.

National ICE council president Chris Crane said, “this bill will put the public at risk without a doubt” by failing to include tough border enforcement measures.

The Gang of Eight’s 844-page proposal includes a pathway to citizenship, which critics say would reward illegal immigrants and punish those who are attempting to immigrate to the United States legally. The bill’s supporters say it provides a difficult but achievable pathway to citizenship that will bring illegal immigrants out of the shadows.

“This bill is amnesty before enforcement,” said Sessions at the press conference. “The day the bill passes, illegal immigrants will have the presumption of amnesty.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Chechen Bombing Suspects Bring Fire on Rubio's Immigration Bill

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Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore

A powerful senator warned Friday that this week’s Boston marathon bombings should give Congress pause as it attempts to overhaul the nation’s immigration system.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (Iowa), senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, emphasized that it’s too early to know whether the perpetrators of the bombings exploited gaps in immigration law to help stage their attacks. But with the chief suspects said to be ethnic Chechens raised in Kyrgyzstan who have lived in the United States for roughly a decade, he suggested their story could serve as a cautionary tale as lawmakers attempt to revamp the system.

“Given the events of this week, it’s important for us to understand the gaps and loopholes in our immigration system,” Grassley said in his opening statement of a Judiciary hearing on reform. “While we don’t yet know the immigration status of the people who have terrorized the communities in Massachusetts, when we find out, it will help shed light on the weaknesses of our system.

“How can individuals evade authorities and plan such attacks on our soil?” Grassley asked. “How can we beef up security checks on people who wish to enter the U.S.? How do we ensure that people who wish to do us harm are not eligible for benefits under the immigration laws, including this new bill before us?”

Friday’s Judiciary hearing — the first this year on the immigration reform issue that is one of President Obama’s top second-term priorities — came as law enforcers had shut down much of Boston in an unprecedented search for one of the suspects in Monday’s twin marathon bombings. The improvised devices killed three people and injured more than 170 when they detonated near the finish line more than four hours into the storied race.

Read more from this story HERE.