Various political sites are reporting that lawmakers and advocates on both sides of the issue are saying attempts to push immigration reform through Congress are dead and unlikely to be considered until after President Obama leaves office.
Reasons often cited include that Eric Cantor, the number two Republican in the House who was continuing to push “comprehensive” immigration reform, lost his party’s nomination to David Brat, a conservative who made opposition to the sort of reforms Cantor had championed a part of his campaign. He defeated Cantor’s K street funded campaign at something like a 30 to 1 disadvantage. That loss put the fear of the lord in those Republican congressman counting on Chamber of Commerce mega bucks to carry them through on the issue.
Other reasons cited include the untimely, as it turns out, surge of south of the border parents dumping their children on the United States. Rumor or manipulations by political agents provocateur had caused them to send their children from and through Mexico to the US border on the presumption, relying on the benevolence of the U.S., that as children and underage squatters they would be scooped up and well cared for. They are being told that the children would be able to settle in the US as amnesty was on the horizon, but they needed to be in the U.S. soon, by whatever means. Anticipation of sponsored reunification and a path for the parents to enter and stay in the U.S. to”care” for their children was also no doubt part of the “rumor.” That they were being used as a political tools to provoke movement on comprehensive reform they did not care about. That aspect backfired. The sentiment is to control the borders period.
There was also the factor that no matter what compromise would be reached on paper with Obama, that he would ignore it and do whatever he wanted should have been compelling enough. No agreement is possible with that president.
Our view is that the influence of the Chamber of Commerce money and desire for cheap labor by some Republicans is only set aside, for now. They will continue to line up support and due bills as best they can for another push, always with the warning that Republican political prospects depend on their view of reform, one that inevitably shifts huge costs to taxpayers. But just a couple of days before today’s spate of reports of immigration reform being dead appeared, this article by Daniel Greenfield writing at Front Page came to our attention. It is compelling social political and cultural analysis of why the borders must be enforced period.
There Is No Conservative Case for Amnesty Excerpts to entice your to read the entire article:
” . . . Amnesty’s reshaping of America will make conservative political positions untenable. That is why some establishment Republicans are pushing for amnesty. A political shift that will bury small government as thoroughly as the gold standard isn’t just to the advantage of the Democratic Party.
. . . Amnesty is an opportunity to reshape national politics by eliminating opposition to everything from Common Core (support for Common Core in California is at 77% among Latinos and 57% among whites) to Global Warming crackdowns (90% of Latinos want government action) and nationalized health care (74% support “public option” government health care).
. . . If the outcome of a conservative policy is more liberalism, it was never a conservative policy to begin with. That is the simplest and most reliable acid test of any “conservative” policy agenda.
. . . 72% of Hispanics in the US believe that the system favors the wealthy and that the government should intervene to reduce the gap between the rich and the poor. 60% believe that hard work does not guarantee success. The majority want higher taxes over tax cuts and spending more while raising taxes to pay for it.
And for those holding out hope on the social conservative front, the majority supports gay marriage and opposes abortion by only a narrow margin.
These aren’t racial or ethnic differences. They are political culture differences. Immigrants from brutal totalitarian left-wing dictatorships, like Cuba or the USSR, often lean to the right. However immigrants from countries that lean to the left without being giant death camps, tend to also lean to the left.
. . . The Mexican Constitution specifies a minimum wage, unionization and low-cost housing. Those aren’t unusual things in Latin American constitutions. They may exist more in theory than in reality, but they are a baseline expectation.
Amnesty advocates claim that legalization will assimilate illegal aliens. It’s hard to tell if they’re kidding themselves or us. They will be “assimilated” by the same left-wing social system that they have already been living in.
. . . Republican advocates of amnesty speak of this country as a beacon of freedom. And they’re right. That beacon of freedom has been offered to immigrants around the world. And it is in their interest and ours that the beacon remain lit by opposing a Super-Amnesty of illegal aliens that would drown out its light.
. . .We do not fight theft by rejecting ownership. Instead we defend the value of human labor. We do not stop killing by making excuses for murderers, but by championing the value of human life. We do not protect marriage by redefining it so that it means nothing, but by recommitting to the family. And we do not end violations of the border by watering down American citizenship, but by strengthening it.
