Free Republic

House Speaker John Boehner's new staffer in charge of immigration policy has significant experience in drafting immigration legislation and pushing for reform. She wouldn't be coming to Boehner's office if House Republicans weren't serious about doing something on the issue. What that is remains to be seen. Rebecca Tallent, former chief of staff to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., will be coming to the speaker's office from the Bipartisan Policy Center, where she has served as director of immigration policy. Her move "is affirmation of [Boehner's] strong desire to move legislation in 2014," BPC's immigration task force cochairman, former Mississippi Gov....

Speaker John A. Boehner, R-Ohio, is taking on a new and formidable immigration policy director, a sign that he could be more serious about passing immigration legislation than his critics suggest. Rebecca Tallent, who currently serves as director of immigration policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, will join Boehner’s staff on Wednesday. Before joining the BPC, Tallent held several senior staff positions with Sen. John McCain, including chief of staff. During her time with McCain, she helped the Arizona Republican draft a handful of immigration overhaul measures, including the last big push McCain made with the late Sen. Edward M....

It is often said that the best way to find out how a candidate would act in office if elected, is to see who he/she surrounds himself with. Money is another factor, what people and industries are backing the candidate. These answers should be an indicator of what to expect. Who is behind the man should gauge what kind of man he is. The great Richard Viguerie tells the story of how he and other conservatives had a “seat at the table” of the presidential campaigns of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan for. His thinking was if Conservatives aren’t at...

A Republican senator from Kentucky says the so-called "comprehensive immigration reform" bill is completely unnecessary because there are already laws on the books the government has yet to enforce that will stop illegal aliens at the border. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) is reportedly unsure whether he will support the immigration bill that would grant amnesty to millions of illegal aliens. McConnell tells Associated Press, "the bill on the merits is a mixed bag," and he won't decide how to vote on the measure until a series of amendments have been considered. But fellow Kentucky Senator Jim Bunning is...

How did Sen. John McCain, the onetime front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, come to this? New polls this week showed support for him plummeting in two key early-voting states. Tied for fifth place in Iowa, with 6 percent. Falling to fourth place in South Carolina, with 7 percent. Mason-Dixon Polling & Research conducted both polls of likely Republican voters, which had error margins of plus or minus 5 percentage points. This after an ongoing Senate debate on immigration that highlights McCain's opposition to his party's base on a hot-button issue, and the informal entry into the race of former...

Re: The Company You Keep Responses to Linda Chavez. An NRO Symposium After two shorter syndicated columns, Linda Chavez wrote a lengthy piece on conservatives, Hispanics, and immigration for National Review Online, published Monday. Today those named in Chavez’s “The Company You Keep” and other immigration-policy experts respond to Chavez. Ward Connerly I have known Linda for years. She is a good friend. Good friends are not immune from the tendency to misspeak occasionally, however. In her initial column that has caused so much anger, Linda was “intemperate,” to say the least. Although there is a certain degree of “anti-Mexican”...

On May 25, I wrote a column entitled “Latino Fear and Loathing” that has provoked considerable anger and recriminations among my fellow conservatives. In the column I asserted that, “Some people just don’t like Mexicans — or anyone else from south of the border,” and described some of the fears shaping these sentiments: “They think Latinos are freeloaders and welfare cheats who are too lazy to learn English. They think Latinos have too many babies, and that Latino kids will dumb down our schools. They think Latinos are dirty, diseased, indolent, and more prone to criminal behavior. They think Latinos...

Senate Republicans killed an immigration bill yesterday that they said would grant amnesty to millions of illegal aliens and then cast doubt on the fate of a new bill that would grant the same amnesty to a slightly smaller portion of illegals. "We've made huge progress," Majority Leader Bill Frist said of the new bill, co-sponsored by Republican Sens. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Mel Martinez of Florida, that would give a direct path to citizenship for workers who have resided illegally in the U.S. for five years or more. But by nightfall, hopes for a deal had dimmed considerably...