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In June 2013, a bipartisan group of senators (including presidential hopeful Marco Rubio) passed a comprehensive immigration reform bill that President Obama promised to sign. Since then, Republicans have worked hard to distance themselves from that bill — Rubio stopped talking about it altogether, and Speaker of the House John Boehner says he won't bring it to the House floor. Now many Latinos are so disillusioned that they don't want to vote at all, making Boehner and the gang's gamble all too worth it. The New York Times noted Sunday that "immigrant-rights advocates report mounting disillusionment with both parties among...

Two things happened over the weekend in the race for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination. 1. Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul led the field in a national poll conducted by CNN/ORC International. 2. Paul won the straw poll at the Northeast Republican Leadership Conference. 3. Those two events come just a week after Paul cruised to another 2016 straw poll victory at the Conservative Political Action Conference. Add those things up and it's quite clear that Paul is the candidate of the moment on the Republican side. There's no one -- not even Ted Cruz or Jeb Bush -- who has...

A group of Catholic bishops, evangelical leaders and advocates pressured top House Republicans to vote this year on overhauling immigration in a series of private meetings on Wednesday. With legislation stalled in the House and prospects dimming, proponents argued that action is a moral imperative and offered the unique, united front of Catholics and evangelicals imploring the House to move ahead. Bishop Eusebio Elizondo of Seattle called it an "historic moment" and said they "reaffirmed that every day of delay, the consequences are separated families." The participants, who spoke to The Associated Press, said they received neither assurances of a...

SEAN HANNITY: You're really taking on a lot of issues. One of them is outreach, the second one is the NSA, the third going after the president. Do you agree with Ted Cruz when he said Rand and I are good friends. Do you agree with that statement? SEN. RAND PAUL: We always have been good friends. I'm not real excited about him mischaracterizing my views and, you know, I won't let that pass. I think that, you know, sometimes people want to stand up and say, 'Hey, look at me, I'm the next Ronald Reagan.' Well, almost all of...

WASHINGTON — For more than a year House Republican leaders have insisted the chamber would act on new immigration laws. And for more than a year, Republicans have done virtually nothing on the issue — despite intense pressure from activists, business groups, and the nation’s changing demographics. And although there are a variety of reasons for inaction, one Republican lawmaker recently offered a frank acknowledgement that for many House Republicans, there’s one issue at play that’s not often discussed: race. “Part of it, I think — and I hate to say this, because these are my people — but I...

The House Republican leadership’s broad framework for overhauling the nation’s immigration laws will call this week for a path to legal status — but not citizenship — for many of the 11 million adult immigrants who are in the country illegally, according to aides who have seen the party’s statement of principles. For immigrants brought to the United States illegally as young children, the Republicans would offer a path to citizenship. -snip- House Republican leaders will circulate it at a three-day retreat for their members that begins Wednesday on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Several pro-immigration organizations that have been...

As House Republicans prepare to wrestle with their differences on immigration at an annual retreat next week, one GOP lawmaker from the Central Valley is signaling there may be movement on an issue that has split the party. At the same time, a high-profile group of bipartisan leaders met in Silicon Valley Thursday to unveil a report showing immigrants are key to a robust U.S. economy. The report by the Bipartisan Policy Center was released by former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and former Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, both Republicans, and former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development...

Some of Texas’ biggest business trade groups are moving to counter tea party and anti-government forces that have dominated recent Republican primaries. The movement mirrors the schism happening nationally between hard right and establishment Republicans. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce recently pledged $50 million to back pro-business Republicans in U.S. Senate primaries and fight tea party insurgents. Michael Quinn Sullivan, president of the fiscal-hawk group Empower Texans said the Texas Future Business Alliance is nothing but a group of big-money interests wanting taxpayer dollars to flow into their pockets. “This is what we’ve come to expect coming out of the...

Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) executive director Mark Krikorian said on Thursday that House Budget Committee chairman Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) is by far the most open borders-minded member of the U.S. Congress—even more so than Democrats like Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL), who is aggressively and publicly calling for President Barack Obama to halt deportations of illegal aliens. "Paul Ryan is probably the most ideologically committed open-borders person in Congress. I would say even more than the Democrats,” Krikorian said in an interview with American Family Radio’s Sandy Rios, One News Now reports. One News Now’s Chad Groening added that...

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), speaking at a forum on women leadership on Wednesday, said immigration is a woman issue, because the male has either been deported or the father “is not present.” “I think that folks who have dealt with refugees and immigrant families see how much it impacts women, because so often many times, the male is not there. Either he’s been deported or the dad is not present. And immigration is really a woman issue. It’s a family-centered issue,” Ros-Lehtinen said at the forum sponsored by Politico. …

The president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is pressuring the House to act on immigration legislation before the end of the year, calling the issue “a matter of great moral urgency” that cannot wait. Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York, said in a letter to Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, on Thursday that he was troubled by reports that immigration reform is delayed in the House since lawmakers have a responsibility to resolve the issue. … “As a moral matter … our nation cannot continue to receive the benefits of the work and contributions of undocumented immigrants...

Speaking to a group of business leaders at the White House on Tuesday, President Barack Obama said he did not see any reason a “pathway to citizenship” for illegal aliens could not be enacted before the end of this year. To make his point, he argued that there are “some very conservative folks” who “believe that now is the time to get this done.” …

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) is planning to release legislation next week that would provide legal status for six years to undocumented immigrants in the United States, he said in an interview Wednesday. Issa, an influential Republican who leads the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, described the legislation as a “come-from-the-shadows” effort that would allow the government to do a full accounting of those who are in the U.S. illegally. Immigrants in this new status would be able to travel to their native country while on this temporary visa, he said.

Florida Senator Marco Rubio has endorsed Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell over his Tea Party primary challenger: Washington (CNN) - One-time tea party favorite Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Florida, said Sunday he supports Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s bid for re-election in 2014. McConnell is facing a primary challenge in his home state of Kentucky from businessman Matt Bevin, who was endorsed by the influential Senate Conservatives Fund on Friday. “Matt Bevin is a true conservative who will fight to stop the massive spending, bailouts, and debt that are destroying our country. He is not afraid to stand up to the...

Dozens of residents of south Tel Aviv on Tuesday demonstrated, after the High Court on Monday declared the government’s policy on detaining illegal immigrants—under which illegals could be detained for up to three years—violated several Basic Laws. Some 2,000 illegal Africans are to be freed from an encampment in the Negev in the next 90 days, most likely heading to Tel Aviv, where there is already a large illegal African community. The government has the option to attempt to deport the illegals, but many of them claim that they are genuine refugees from political repression, so deporting them would likely...

The Federal Election Commission is examining whether dozens of political action committees and individuals contributed more than the legally allowed amount to House Speaker John Boehner during last year's election cycle. Letters the Federal Election Committee sent Monday to Friends of John Boehner indicated that donors including coal, energy, and gambling interests, exceeded contribution limits to Boehner's committee by more than $150,000.

A central question Congress is wrestling with over the current proposed immigration legislation is whether the 11 million immigrants already in the United States illegally should get a path to citizenship. And surprisingly, the answer from a small but growing number of House Republicans is “yes,” just as long as it’s not the “special” path advocated by Democrats and passed by the Senate. … Many House Republicans say people who illegally crossed the border or overstayed their visas should not be rewarded with a special, tailor-made solution that awards them a prize of American citizenship, especially when millions are waiting...

When asked how voters could be confident that the Department of Homeland Security will enforce the border security elements of the Senate's “Gang of Eight” immigration bill, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) replied that “we can go to court.” “We have the court system. That’s the way our government runs. If the executive branch does not enforce laws, then we can go to court and make sure tat those laws are enforced,” McCain said Tuesday while participating in an immigration town hall. …

U.S.-born Junnyor Diaz studies at a Phoenix high school. His Mexico-born older brother, Edder, has applied for a program to avoid deportation, while their undocumented mother, Angelica, cleans houses to keep the family fed and, above all, together. For Junnyor and 16 million others like him in mixed-status families, reform could bring stability to a fraught situation in which a U.S.-born child is a citizen with a shot at a university education and a stable working life, while a sibling or parent born abroad can face instability and deportation. "There isn't a day that goes by that I don't worry...

If the Senate immigration bill came up for a vote in the House, it would probably pass — some of the Republicans and almost all of the Democrats would combine for 218 votes. But conservatives have extracted promises from John Boehner not to let that happen, and the Speaker has dutifully pledged to keep the House from voting on any bill that lacks the support of most Republicans. That would seem to make comprehensive reform pretty dead, right? Except Paul Ryan, who clearly wants to pass a bill, floated a way around this promise: -snip- So the plan he's discussing...