Free Republic

A Republican-led push to legalize young unauthorized immigrants has been met with stony resistance from groups representing the very "Dreamers" such a bill would help. Immigrant advocacy groups say the proposed "Kids Act" is a way to avoid a comprehensive overhaul of the nation's immigration laws, which would provide a pathway to citizenship to a much larger number of immigrants. The Kids Act, like earlier "Dream Act" proposals, would legalize young people who were brought to the country by their parents and meet certain requirements. "We will not stand for anything that separates our families," said Greisa Martinez, an organizer...

But buried deep within the immigration bill are hidden multimillion-dollar slush funds for left-wing nonprofit groups to provide services to the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants now in the U.S.

On Thursday, Speaker John Boehner gave a sliver of fresh insight into his thinking about immigration reform, saying he thinks legislation will pass the House before Congress has to wrestle with the debt ceiling. The Ohio Republican said “we’ll see, but I would hope so” when asked if an overhaul of the nation’s migrant laws would pass before the debt ceiling — which is expected to need lifting in October or November. Pulling the veil back even more on his views on the topic, Boehner said that Americans “expect that no one who broke our laws will get special treatment.”...

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) on Wednesday offered an endorsement for a proposal to grant citizenship to children who were brought to the U.S. illegally by their parents. “This is about basic fairness,” Boehner said one week after convening a two-hour meeting to discuss immigration with his conference. “These children were brought here of no accord of their own, and frankly they’re in a very difficult position,” he said. “And I think many of our members believe that this issue needs to be addressed.” Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) are crafting a bill to...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats doggedly pursuing a far-reaching immigration bill are counting on help from Republican Rep. Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney’s running mate last year and an unlikely candidate for delivering the centerpiece of President Barack Obama’s second-term agenda. Ryan, the House Budget Committee chairman who is frequently mentioned in the GOP lineup of possible 2016 presidential candidates, stands apart from many fellow House Republicans in favoring a way out of the shadows for the 11 million immigrants living in the U.S. in violation of the law. He casts sweeping overhaul as a necessity to ensure both economic and national...

The House Republican leadership is reaching out to top House Democrats to assess their support for a piecemeal approach to immigration reform, according to sources involved in the discussions. The House’s immigration gameplan is to pass individual bills rather than take the comprehensive approach advocated by the Senate. -snip- The meeting, and the lack of progress made, is sure to frustrate the corporate interests who are dropping millions of dollars into the effort to reform immigration. There was no real sense about whether the GOP will try to reform the high-skilled and low-skilled visa process, providing a new pathway to...

Two weeks after the end of his failed vice-presidential bid, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) was already thinking ahead to another big fight: immigration reform. And he was thinking about it in a bipartisan way. Ryan ran into his old friend, Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez (D-Ill.), and urged him to restart his effort to get a comprehensive immigration package through Congress.

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) urged their House Republican colleagues to pass immigration reform legislation in a closed-door meeting Wednesday, with the Speaker arguing his conference would be “in a much weaker position” if it failed to act. A divided House Republican conference met for more than two hours in the basement of the Capitol to begin hashing out a response to the sweeping immigration bill the Senate passed last month. -snip- He (Issa) said the House would deal with the 11 million illegal immigrants, but that the conference viewed them not as a uniform block,...

Speaker John Boehner told Republicans that the internal debate over immigration reform is an “important conversation,” as the House GOP kicked off its closed-door meeting Wednesday afternoon. Boehner said the House will “not” take up the Senate-passed bill, but said members must do something to address the issue, according to sources inside the room. Majority Leader Eric Cantor, harkening back to when President Barack Obama first took office, said Republicans need to have a counter offer, just like their alternative to the stimulus.

The university's Stritch School of Medicine not only intends to waive legal residency as an admissions requirement for applicants but aims to offer a financing plan through a state agency

The House voted to defund Obama’s DREAM policy. Keep in mind that the policy was implemented illegally via executive order. Executive orders are not to be used to implement law. One can only hope that sanity will continue to prevail on the illegal executive orders meant to bypass the laws of this constitutional republic. Any immigration laws should also be defeated under this political environment.

Illegal immigrants seeking a reprieve under an election-year program implemented by the Obama administration are being approved at a rate of over 99 percent -- a situation that has the immigration officer union raising concerns about fraud and security risks. The program in question is called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which allows some illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as children to seek tentative legal status. It was the administration's answer to the "Dream Act," a bill Congress drafted but did not approve. The union representing thousands of employees in U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which processes these...

Many things are holding the headlines hostage, the terrorist attacks, the crippling effects of Obamacare, the prospect of expanding war in Syria, and as always Iran. There is one over-riding constant that defines as it divides the present era: the fact that America has a President who advances values and policies diametrically opposed to the traditional beliefs of a vast number of Americans. From bowing to foreign leaders to not knowing how many states there are, from vowing to fundamentally transform America to actually doing it, President Obama is to many the Manchurian Candidate. Elected the first time on a...

A federal judge has a message for President Obama: Stop bypassing Congress on immigration. Obama issued a directive in June 2012 halting the deportation of many young illegal aliens after Congress refused to pass the DREAM Act, which would have provided conditional permanent residency to young illegals. A federal judge in Dallas is now threatening to reverse that directive. U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor said Tuesday that he will likely rule in favor of a lawsuit seeking to overturn the new policy. He has asked both sides to file additional arguments by May 6. The ICE agent union challenged the...

A college education has never been more expensive than it is now. #The tuition rates at state colleges and universities have seen double-digit increases the past few years. The increase in college costs mean the pool of cash for financial aid does not go as far. #And this week’s state budget projection shows a $1.3 billion (yes, with a B) gap between anticipated tax revenue and anticipated expenses. #Yet, the state House on Wednesday approved 77-20 a proposal that would make young illegal immigrants eligible for state college financial aid. #In theory, if money was no object, offering every qualified...

California Dream Act: 20,000 illegal immigrant students apply for state financial aid for the first time.. More than 20,000 college-bound students are seeking state financial aid for the first time under California's new Dream Act law that allows them to get the help despite their immigration status. While far from a complete picture, that number -- which matched state estimates -- is the best indicator yet of how many students statewide hope to benefit from a pair of laws known as the California Dream Act that took full effect in January. The changes could radically change the college experience for...

Those that took high school Spanish will recognize a bastardized of the phrase they learned. Originally it was a greeting of welcome “My house is your house”. Through an orderly process we have welcomed immigrants from all over the world into our house. But now we are hearing that the orderly process is broken that there is only one way to fix it. Using the same solution from 1986 that worked so well we are told it must be repeated. These illegal’s and their advocates want as Disney calls a SAP (Special Assistance Pass) that allow some to the head...

Friend -- I was brought to this country from Mexico when I was 2 years old. I am an undocumented immigrant -- and I am living proof that our immigration system is broken. For the first 17 years of my life, I slept on a couch. My mom worked three jobs to support our family. I worked hard, too. I did my homework, participated in class, and earned the opportunity go to college. But after I enrolled, state law changed and many undocumented immigrants were forced to drop out. Suddenly they could no longer afford the education they were eager...

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- The plight of Hurricane Sandy victims has become a flashpoint in the Albany debate over the DREAM Act. Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis (R-East Shore/Brooklyn) is taking flak from Democrats for linking taxpayer-funded tuition aid for college-age illegal immigrants with Hurricane Sandy victims. Ms. Malliotakis says that Albany lawmakers should be more focused on helping storm victims than providing taxpayer-funded tuition aid to the children of illegal immigrants. "This should not be the focus of the Assembly or the state Legislature," she said. "There are more pressing issues in the state right now." Among those issues, she said,...

DENVER– Once again cheers and applause erupted under the golden dome when a bill to award in-state tuition to illegal immigrants was passed Thursday by the Senate Education Committee on a 6-3 vote. The aye votes were cast by five Democrats and a Republican – state Sen. Owen Hill of Colorado Springs. “We have a great piece of legislation that will finally garner bipartisan support in the general assembly,” declared state Sen. Angela Giron (D-Pueblo), a sponsor of Senate Bill 33. It’s the seventh attempt over the past 11 years to pass a bill granting in-state tuition to illegal students....