Free Republic

Two House Republicans who had been trying to craft a comprehensive immigration package said Friday they were dropping of bipartisan negotiations. In a joint statement, Texas Republican Reps. John Carter and Sam Johnson said that they had “reached a tipping point” in the talks and “can no longer continue” working on a “broad approach” to a rewrite of the nation’s immigration laws. “We want to be clear. The problem is politics,” they said in a joint statement. “Instead of doing what’s right for America, President Obama time and again has unilaterally disregarded the U.S. Constitution, the letter of the law...

After meeting with lawmakers on Capitol Hill, the Facebook chief executive was interviewed onstage for about an hour at the Newseum by James Bennet, editor in chief of The Atlantic. "The purpose of this trip is largely for immigration and not for Facebook," Zuckerberg said.

Senior GOP aides of a super PAC linked to Speaker John Boehner are lobbying House Republicans to pass the Senate “Gang of Eight” immigration bill, legislation that Boehner has said he will not bring to the House floor. The lobbying effort is coming under the umbrella of the American Action Network, a nonprofit 501(c)(4) “action tank” led by former senator Norm Coleman, which is touting the “major positive economic impact” of the Senate bill in e-mails sent to individual House Republican offices. AAN is housed in the same office as the Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC associated with Boehner,...

This week, the Washington Post began the process of informing its readers that the prospects of Congress granting amnesty to 11 million illegal immigrants is fading. At its politics blog, The Fix, Post reporter Aaron Blake tried to explain "why immigration reform is in trouble." It turns out August has not been kind to the Senate's "Gang of 8" amnesty legislation. The Post article focuses on California GOP Rep. Jeff Denham. With a district that is 40% Hispanic, Denham has long been a supporter of comprehensive immigration reform. Agriculture, which is often heavily dependent on immigrant labor, is a major...

When Chief Justice Roberts asked if the defenders of Obamacare expected the Supreme Court to review all 2,700 pages of this overreaching law, he posed a question that should have been asked 100 years ago when the “progressive” movement started. It made no more sense to the Court than it did to Charlie Rangel or Nancy Pelosi who insists a bill must be passed so we can find out what’s in it! Tea Partiers formed committees to take on 20 pages each among them. It wasn’t pretty! Mz Nancy still claims her Congress took the Constitution into consideration. Now the...

Dear Excellencies, Reverends, Deacons and fellow Catholics - This morning I read in my Bakersfield paper that a group of Catholic Bishops and priests are planning to push the current immigration bill on 60 targeted Republican lawmakers, including my Congressman Kevin McCarthy. McCarthy has been trying to hold the fort against the complete collapse of the nation’s borders and taking flak for it from people who ought to know better. If “Obamacare II” – the draconian, poison-pilled immigration bill–is passed, all 1200 pages of it, kiss what’s left of the Republic good bye. Is Nancy Pelosi going to be here...

An unusual alliance of advocates — including Internet moguls and evangelicals, representatives of big business and labor unions — is working across the country during the August congressional recess in an all-out push for immigration reform. Click here for full propaganda experience===================================================================== Beware of invaders bearing "asylum" claims The Obama administration and other amnesty pushers had been ridiculously claiming for some time that illegal "immigration" was down to almost zero. The amnesty crowd vociferously maintained that almost all illegal border crossings had dried up and thus the border was "secure". Obviously, they hadn't been to Southern California lately. The torrent...

Skip to 3:45 for the key bit, in which a guy who’s willing to go nuclear in a quixotic bid to defund ObamaCare warns his party not to be too obstinate in resisting immigration reform — or else. Mark Krikorian summarizes his logic this way: Mark Krikorian @MarkSKrikorian Give your toddler all the candy he wants, because otherwise he´ll just take it anyway: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/08/marco-rubio-immigration-executive-order-95487.html … (Snip)In fairness to him, Rubio’s not making this up. Amnesty shills on the left have warned, with increasing volume lately, that King Barack might decide to grant de facto amnesty to illegals via executive order

The White House on Tuesday released a new report arguing a pathway to citizenship for the nation's 11 million illegal immigrants would add 2 million jobs to the economy and boost gross domestic product by $1.4. trillion over the next decade. The report, penned by Director of Domestic Policy Cecilia Muñoz and Director of the National Economic Council Gene Sperling, is the latest in a series of releases touting the economic benefits of comprehensive immigration reform as the White House pushes House Republicans to act on the issue. "We cannot afford a system that creates a group which can never...

Submitted by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog, Should we broadcast a message to the rest of the world that anyone that can find a way to enter this country and somehow get to a “sanctuary city” can sign up for a plethora of welfare benefits and live a life of leisure at the expense of hard working American citizens? Yes, this question sounds absurd, but what I have just described will essentially be official U.S. government policy if the immigration bill going through Congress becomes law. And unfortunately, Democrats now say that they have the Republican votes that...

White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters that Barack Obama and Speaker John Boehner spoke last week about immigration and the budget. John Boehner’s spokesman refuses to provide any details on the discussions. The Daily Caller reported: President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner talked about pending political battles before the congressional recess, but White House officials declined to detail the conversation. Any contact between the two leaders could be critical, because they’re expected this fall to negotiate important budget deals, to clash over delays to Obamacare, and to kill or approve a controversial and transformative rewrite of the...

SAN DIEGO - Team 10 learned of a loophole allowing hundreds of immigrants into the country from Mexico.

The battle over whether the Republican controlled House will grant amnesty to illegal aliens or push back the Democrat controlled Senate’s drive to create millions of new Democrat voters has heated up. Because the House is in recess and its members are back in their home districts, the psychological warfare operations phase of this battle has been ratcheted up by the Democrats. A new report from the leftist blog, “The Hill” tells us that Democrat Representative Luis Gutierrez (Chicago – Mexico, Puerto Rico and South America) is crowing about personally knowing of between 40 and 50 House Republicans who are...

Illinois Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D) made a dramatic declaration while talking to the Washington Post about the votes needed to pass immigration reform through the House.

While House Speaker John Boehner is keeping a tight lid on his personal position on immigration reform, conservative activists and lawmakers fear the Republican leader may rubber-stamp Democrats' controversial legislation in a backroom deal with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Boehner declined to answer whether he supports what many on the left have come to term a “pathway to citizenship” for illegal immigrants during his appearance on CBS News’ Face The Nation on Sunday morning. For conservative lawmakers, that does not assuage fears that he and his deputies House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Whip Kevin McCarthy, and Budget Committee chairman...

During football season, the teams that win call the right plays from their playbook. And when it comes to immigration reform, Congress needs to make sure it makes the right calls. The House Judiciary Committee, which has jurisdiction over our immigration laws, is taking a step-by-step approach to immigration reform and building a strategic playbook that first strengthens border security and interior enforcement, improves our legal-immigration programs, and fairly deals with unlawful immigrants. A robust border-security and interior-enforcement strategy is the first line of defense for any successful immigration system. Strong border security not only reduces illegal immigration, it also...

A union representing 12,000 federal immigration workers is warning top House Republicans against legalizing young undocumented immigrants. The union is made up of employees of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), which handles immigration paperwork. In a letter sent on Tuesday to four Republicans, including House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (Virginia) and Rep. Paul Ryan (Wisconsin), the union expressed worries about a Republican bill that would legalize DREAMers. Since President Obama has already given deportation relief to young undocumented immigrants -- and bypassed Congress to do it -- the union worries he might similarly use his executive power to rework...

Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) said Wednesday that comprehensive immigration reform has the support of dozens of members of the Republican majority in the House of Representatives. Among GOP backers of comprehensive reform he cited Wisconsin’s Paul Ryan, the 2012 Republican candidate for vice president. Gutierrez said 195 of the 201 Democrats in the House would vote for a reform bill similar to the one passed last month by the Senate, meaning that fewer than two dozen Republican votes would be needed to reach the magic number of 218 required to pass it.

President Obama sought Wednesday to reassure Democrats nervous about the impact of his health care law and the prospects for immigration legislation, telling them "You're on the right side of history." In the first of two closed-door meetings on Capitol Hill, Obama focused on financial gains as the economy emerges from the worst downturn since the Depression. He was warned about nominating former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers as chairman of the Federal Reserve and faced questions about his health care law. Some lawmakers complained that three years after its passage, the law still baffles many Americans. Rep. Ed Perlmutter, D-Colo.,...

The Homeland Security Department has lost track of more than 1 million people who it knows arrived in the U.S. but who it cannot prove left the country, according to an audit Tuesday that also found the department probably won’t meet its own goals for deploying an entry-exit system. The findings were revealed as Congress debates an immigration bill, and the Government Accountability Office’s report could throw up another hurdle because lawmakers in the House and Senate have said that any final deal must include a workable system to track entries and exits and cut down on so-called visa overstays....