Free Republic

(CNSNews.com) – The group United We Dream marched from the U.S. Capitol to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters to deliver 200 letters to DNC Chairwoman Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) on Tuesday, demanding that the executive branch give amnesty to the illegal alien parents of U.S. citizens and “Dreamers.” Such offspring are brought here illegally as children but are now protected from deportation through an executive order signed by President Barack Obama in August 2012. Some 200 people, many of them wearing T-shirts that read “Obama Deports Parents,” held a press conference ahead of the march criticizing Democrats for...

Gone is the sunny, compassionate candidate of 2008. In the run-up to 2016, the former Arkansas governor is downright angry. He’s learned his lesson from his last campaign, ex-aides say. In 2007, Mike Huckabee stood impassively on a Republican presidential debate stage while Mitt Romney tried to embarrass him. A program that Huckabee had instituted in Arkansas gave undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children the right to in-state tuition at Arkansas’s public universities. Huckabee sounded, Romney said, like a Massachusetts liberal. “Are we going to give taxpayer-funded benefits to kids that are here illegally and put them...

San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro wants President Barack Obama to give temporary amnesty to illegal immigrants whose family members are U.S. citizens. Castro, considered a potential vice presidential candidate for Democrats in 2016, believes Obama should extend the deferred action even more to those over 30 years of age and who may not have come to the country as children. "We should look at people who have been here for more than ten years, who do not have a serious criminal record and who have family members who are United States citizens," Castro said in an interview before his debate...

South Carolina Republican Rep. Jeff Duncan is dropping his co-sponsorship of an immigration bill House Republicans have been quietly working to include in the upcoming Department of Defense authorization bill, saying the language should never have been considered to be added to the unrelated measure. Late Wednesday, Duncan said he hadn't been aware of efforts by the bill's author, California Rep. Jeff Denham (R-CA), to add the language to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) – and that if it were added, “NDAA would lose my vote as well.” At issue is a proposal to allow so-called DREAMers to obtain...

Deferred deportations and work permits granted under an Obama program don't always result in better jobs or higher pay. Lack of education or work experience is a big hurdle. WASHINGTON — Working as a Jack in the Box cashier, Marissa Cruz Santos breathed a sigh of relief last year when she qualified for an Obama administration program that defers deportation of young immigrants who came to the U.S. illegally as children. With high expectations and a freshly minted work permit, Santos, 27, hit the job market, hoping to leverage her new status and a Cal State Fullerton degree into an...

Amid the noisy cultural and political warfare waged over immigration reform, a quieter but no less compelling bit of protest has emerged. This week, about 30 people -- most of them Latin-Americans who had been previously deported from the U.S. after living here for years -- marched to the Otay Mesa border crossing in San Diego County and told border inspectors they wanted asylum. The individuals were then taken to a detention center, where their fate now rests with an immigration judge. Part of a new crusade called "Bring Them Home," the action is aimed at heaping negative attention on...

Liberals will use a Straw Man argument and say that Bush and Clinton used Executive Orders far more than Obama has. But it isn't the NUMBER of Executive Orders that is at issue, it is the NATURE of the Executive Orders. If Congress passes a law saying that illegals will be deported - WILL - if they do X,Y and Z when coming here, how can Obama keep from breaking the U.S. Constitution by saying that "Dreamers" can stay and long as they do A, B and C? Some would say that Governors cannot override federal law as the U.S....

A House Republican bill aimed at forcing President Barack Obama to enforce immigration and other laws as they are written drew sharp rebukes Wednesday from the White House and House Democrats, who ripped the measure as anti-immigrant. The legal dispute over President Barack Obama’s unilateral decision to suspend deportations for people brought to the country illegally by their parents, known as “dreamers,” has split the GOP and Democrats before. But on Wednesday the dispute threatened to end any lingering goodwill Democrats were inclined to extend toward GOP leaders, who just weeks earlier unveiled a set of immigration principles for overhauling...

HAMILTON — Six people — four men and two women — have been arrested during a protest today at the Butler County Jail. Members of United We Dream, a national immigrant youth network, are staging the protest at the jail. Members of the group are urging Congress to pass a bill that would protect undocumented immigrants from deportation and instead allow them to pursue citizenship. The Butler County Jail houses undocumented immigrants for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

President Obama will extend his mini-amnesty for young illegals, said Cecilia Muñoz, White House director of domestic policy. “As long as this president” is in power, “you will be able to renew your deferred action,” Muñoz told one questioner during an online question-and-answer session on immigration conducted via Skype. So far, Obama’s deputies have granted the two-year “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals” amnesty to at least 567,563 illegals, giving them the right to get jobs in every state, get drivers’ licenses in some states, to enroll in school and to receive government aid. Only 21,162 illegals have been rejected. Roughly...

(CNSNews.com) - At a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday, Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) said that President Barack Obama should be expanding his prosecutorial discretion when it comes to enforcement of immigration laws. “Unfortunately, he should not be limiting his prosecutorial discretion. He should be expanding his prosecutorial discretion,” Gutierrez said during a hearing on the constitutionality and legality of actions the Obama administration has taken on issues like the enforcement of immigration laws. The president signed a memo calling for deferred action for certain young illegal aliens who came into the country as children and have pursued education or...

As this week's series of demonstrations on the National Mall shows, it's hard to rally citizens when Congress seems incapable of responding to their demands.On March 21 2012, José Gutiérrez—41-years-old and undocumented—was deported to Mexico. A successful film engineer in Los Angeles with two young children—a two-year-old son and a four-month-old daughter who was in the hospital at the time—Gutiérrez had lived in the United States since childhood. Nine days later, he risked crossing the border illegally at the San Luis Port of Entry in Arizona to reunite with his family. The next his wife Shena, a United States citizen,...

Before the Sunday night crash that killed two young step-sisters playing in a pile of leaves in Forest Grove, Cinthya Garcia-Cisneros, along with her boyfriend and brother, went to get something to eat. Attorneys for Garcia-Cisneros said Friday, Oct. 25, that the teens went to Sonic Drive-In in Cornelius, where Garcia-Cisneros had recently been hired. She was supposed to start her new job this week. From there, the three started toward home in a 2001 Nissan Pathfinder. Court records say Garcia-Cisneros was driving. The vehicle, records say, belonged to her boyfriend Mario Echeverria’s mother. Garcia-Cisneros purposely drove through a large...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)President Obama "has the responsibility" to stop deportations of illegal immigrants if Congress proves unable to pass a comprehensive immigration bill, Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) argued in an interview published Friday. "There are devastating effects if the Congress of the United States cannot enact comprehensive immigration reform – then the president of the United States has the responsibility to act to defend those immigrants which he says he wants to provide safety and justice for," Gutierrez told Salon. In 2012, the Obama administration announced it would stop deporting some illegal immigrants who entered the United States as children under certain...

WASHINGTON — With immigration re-emerging as the topic of focus in Washington, an unusual coalition of business executives, Republican Party activists and evangelical leaders will descend on Capitol Hill early next week to pressure House Republicans to pass their own legislation. The debate threatens to create another schism in the Republican Party and to further alienate a major source of campaign contributions; several corporate executives interviewed this week said they were considering withholding donations from lawmakers who get in the way. The push by conservatives will begin Tuesday morning with a news conference featuring, among others, Al Cardenas, the chairman...

Shifting gears from the technical problems of the Affordable Care Act website, President Obama called on Congress to work on an immigration overhaul. The immigration plans of the President have been overshadowed by the government shutdown, and the launch of the new healthcare system. Some Republicans are already announcing their legislation plans. Re. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) plans to release legislation sometime next week that would provide temporary legal status to undocumented immigrants. His legislation would provide undocumented immigrants six years of legal status in the country, according to a Politico interview. -snip- Guests: Seung Min Kim, Congressional Reporter for POLITICO...

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.

Rep. Matt Salmon (R-AZ) said on Wednesday at the Heritage Foundation-hosted Conversations with Conservatives press event that House Speaker John Boehner has promised him that the Senate’s “Gang of Eight” immigration bill is dead in the House. “I very recently had a conversation with the Speaker and if immigration reform moves, it’s going to move piecemeal,” Salmon said in response to a question from Breitbart News. “And it will go over one bill at a time and if there is any kind of conference, it will be on specific bills we send over. It will not be on the Gang...

Immigration reform advocates plan an aggressive campaign to bring the issue back — and the White House has signaled it’s on board. Can Obama emerge from the fiscal crisis with enough momentum to win the immigration fight? As the fiscal fight roiling Washington nears its end, the White House is already signaling that it plans to use the political momentum it has gained during the shutdown fight to charge back into the immigration debate. And this time, Democratic pollsters and advocates say, they could actually win. The final chapter of the current crisis hasn’t been written yet, but Democrats in...

Rep. Luis Gutierrez, an Illinois Democrat, said there’s still hope for immigration reform—even in the “dark” times we’re in now. “There are 45-50 Republicans ready to vote for comprehensive immigration reform. That’s a sea change,” Gutierrez said on Morning Joe. “There are 180 out of the 200 Democrats, maybe more. Let’s have a vote. Let’s join with the senators, let’s get this issue behind us. As Paul Ryan said to me one time