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Selling Out the Nation: Labor, Business Reach Immigration Deal

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Photo Credit: AP

Senate negotiators cleared the last major hurdle to reaching a bipartisan immigration reform deal Saturday as labor and business groups signed off on a visa program for future low-skilled workers, according to sources familiar with the talks.

The agreement marks a major breakthrough and significantly improves the odds of passing a larger immigration bill because it brings two powerful Washington interests on board on an issue that contributed to the defeat of past reform efforts. The visa program, which allows businesses to bring in up to 200,000 low-skilled workers annually depending on economic conditions, would be among the most controversial elements of the overhaul package. But the AFL-CIO and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are expected to play a key role in helping blunt attacks by conservatives activists and liberals.

“This issue has always been the dealbreaker on immigration reform, but not this time,” Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), a leader of the Senate’s Gang of Eight, said in a statement Saturday night.

The Gang of Eight remains in negotiations on the broader bill. The senators have reached tentative agreement on many of the major issues, including the path to citizenship and border security, but they have yet to review the legislative language and caution that they don’t have a deal until they agree on everything.

The reform bill is so complex that none of the senators is willing to say they have an agreement until they can look at it on paper. The group is preparing to spend the next week finalizing the legislation, with an announcement likely to come when they return from the Easter recess on April 8 — although it will mark the start of a long and difficult road to passage.

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‘Gang of 8’ Senators on Tour of Mexican Border See Illegal Climb Fence Right in Front of Them (+video)

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Photo Credit: AP

Four of the U.S. senators leading the charge on immigration reform got more than they expected today when they came to Nogales, Ariz., to check on border security.

Just a few steps away from where they stood with Customs and Border Patrol officials, the problem facing the nation unfolded before their eyes: A young woman was sprinting her way out of Mexico, then climbing a security fence, only to be caught by the border patrol within seconds.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., soon tweeted about the event, saying: “Just witnessed a woman successfully climb an 18-ft bollard fence a few yards from us in Nogales. And Border Patrol successfully apprehended her, but incident is another reminder that threats to our border security are real.”

Arizona’s Senate delegation, McCain and Sen. Jeff Flake, both Republicans, hosted Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., for a tour along the border in Nogales, part of the Tucson sector. All four senators are members of the so-called “Gang of Eight” that is working on a solution to the nation’s immigration issues.

ABC News was at the scene of the apprehension exclusively and later asked the senators from out of state what they thought of the experience.

Watch video here:

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Senators: ‘Far-Left’ Group Pushes EPA To Implement Cap-And-Trade Without Congressional Approval

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Republican senators urged the Environmental Protection Agency not to participate in a “sue-and-settle” arrangement with a law school policy institute that is trying to require the agency to develop rules implementing cap-and-trade, even though Congress refused to pass the law.

“In a recent rulemaking petition, the Institute for Policy Integrity (the Institute) seeks to compel EPA rules under three separate sections of the Clean Air Act,” Marten Law’s Dustin Till explains in a post. “The Institute first argues that Section 115 of the Clean Air Act, a never-before-used provision addressing international air pollution, requires EPA to order all 50 states to modify their state-level implementation plans to address greenhouse gas emissions.”

Four senators attacked the idea today in a letter to EPA assistant administrator Gina McCarthy, President Obama’s nominee to lead the agency.

“The potential negative impact in this case is that it threatens to expand environmental regulation beyond original intent of the law and could have detrimental effects on the livelihoods of our fellow Americans that are not always understood by academia,” wrote Sen. David Vitter, R-La., Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Wyo., and Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., in a letter today.

“When the price of transportation fuels increases for any reason, it is those with limited resources and fixed incomes whose livelihoods are most impacted by this added financial burden,” they added. “In recent years, we have consistently heard the term “environmental justice” as a reason for promulgating certain agency actions. We believe there also needs to be a measure of “economic justice” to ensure that Agency actions are not overly regressive and lack consideration for economic harm visited upon the very citizens these environmental laws are intended to protect.”

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Bloomberg Begins Multimillion Dollar TV Gun Control Blitz to Push Swing Senators

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Photo Credit: NY Times

The commercial is an unambiguous appeal to gun owners: a middle-aged hunter, rifle in hand, vows that he will fight to protect the Second Amendment. But in a sensible, father-of-the-house tone, he also urges voters to support comprehensive background checks, “so criminals and the dangerously mentally ill can’t buy guns.”

The man behind the advertisement is not known for his kinship with the gun crowd: Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, the nation’s fiercest advocate of restrictions on firearms since the December rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

Determined to persuade Congress to act in response to that shooting, Mr. Bloomberg on Monday will begin bankrolling a $12 million national advertising campaign that focuses on senators who he believes might be persuaded to support a pending package of federal regulations to curb gun violence. The ads, in 13 states, will blanket those senators’ districts during an Easter Congressional recess that is to be followed by debate over the legislation.

In a telling sign of how much the white-hot demands for gun control have been tempered by political reality, Mr. Bloomberg’s commercials make no mention of an assault weapons ban once sought by the White House and its allies, instead focusing on the more achievable goal of universal background checks.

“You don’t want to lose everything in the interest of getting the perfect,” Mr. Bloomberg said in an interview, acknowledging his disappointment over the apparent unlikelihood of an assault weapons ban, but insisting he is resolved to push the legislation through at a time when its prospects are uncertain.

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Senators Raise Alarm Over Another Possible Sale Of Taxpayer-Backed Firm To Chinese

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Photo Credit: ReutersRepublican senators complained Wednesday that U.S. taxpayer dollars could end up boosting the Chinese economy, following reports that a Chinese firm is leading the pack of companies bidding for a majority stake in government-backed Fisker Automotive.

The troubled California-based electric car maker, which was backed by U.S. taxpayers to the tune of nearly $530 million, for months has been looking for a financial partner. Reuters reported earlier this week that China’s Zhejiang Geely Holding Group is favored to take over, though Fisker is also reportedly weighing a bid from another Chinese auto maker.

The development comes after Fisker’s main battery supplier — U.S. government-backed A123 Systems — was recently purchased by a separate Chinese firm.

Sens. John Thune, R-S.D., and Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, voiced concern Wednesday that Chinese companies are benefiting from U.S. taxpayers’ investment.

“Obama’s green energy investments appear to be nothing more than venture capital for eventual Chinese acquisitions,” Thune said in a statement. “After stimulus-funded A123 was just acquired by a Chinese-based company, it’s troubling to see that yet another struggling taxpayer-backed company might be purchased under duress by a Chinese company.”

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DHS Memo Reveals Government Not Screening Out Dependents in Immigration Process

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller After more than six months and three oversight requests, the Department of Homeland Security has finally responded to four Republican senators’ inquiry into why the government seems so willing to allow entry to immigrants likely to become primarily dependent on the government for subsistence, or “public charges.”

In the DHS response to Republican Sens. Jeff Sessions, Chuck Grassley, Orrin Hatch and Pat Roberts — penned by Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs Nelson Peacock and exclusively obtained by The Daily Caller — the department explains that from 2005 through Aug. 9, 2012, a total of 9,796 applicants under the Visa Waiver Program (VWP) were denied admission because they were deemed likely to become a public charge.

According to a calculation from Sessions’ office, based on data from DHS’ Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, the total number of people denied admission constitutes only .0084 percent of approved VWP applicants in that seven-year period.

The VWP allows eligible citizens from 37 participating countries to enter the United States without first obtaining a visa for stays of 90 days or less. The applicants who were turned away were denied entry, not a visa — but either way, very few have been denied entry on public charge grounds in recent years.

The concern with these VWP participants is that they might overstay their 90-day limit through the program, which is easier to navigate than the process for obtaining a normal visa. An estimated 40 percent of illegal immigrants have overstayed their visas.

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GOP Senators: Thousands of Ballots Unlikely to Reach Military Voters in Time

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photo credit: Reserve AffairsA group of Republican senators said Monday that thousands of voter ballots are unlikely to reach military service members until after Nov. 6.

One day ahead of the election, Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas), Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.), John McCain (R-Ariz.), Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) sent a letter to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to express their concern over delays in ballots reaching military voters overseas.

“We write to express concerns over another serious failure by the Department of Defense (DoD) to safeguard the voting rights of our overseas military service members, which we believe could result in the imminent disenfranchisement of thousands,” the letter stated.

Mail redirection in the military can take between 14 to 50 days, meaning a ballot could reach the voter possibly more than a month after ballots have to be mailed back in order to be counted. The Military Postal Service Agency (MPSA) identified problems with the system after the 2010 election, but hasn’t implemented changes.

“DoD’s failure to fix this longstanding problem means that the blank ballots of thousands of overseas service members, as well as some who have recently returned from overseas, could be currently trapped in an archaic and inefficient mail forwarding system,” the senators wrote. “These ballots are unlikely to reach these service members until after Election Day has passed.”

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