Free Republic

A Cantor-First Immigration Policy: House Majority Leader Eric Cantor seems to be in a real race to retain his seat in the GOP primary. His challenger, economist Dave Brat, has attacked Cantor as soft on immigration amnesty.** The charge is accurate: Cantor’s actually written his own version of the DREAM Act, legalizing young undocumented immigrants. He supports the ENLIST Act--a seemingly appealing measure (limited to DREAMers who enlist in the military) that would nevertheless give the Democratic Senate a chance to push a much larger amnesty in “conference.”

Another? Eric Cantor’s Top Consultant Given $1.13M by Virginia GOP April 24th, 2014 - 9:53 pm     inShare After learning that newly installed Virginia GOP Executive Director Shaun Kenney is on Eric Cantor’s payroll, Virginia Republican voters are now hearing that a company run by Cantor’s top consultant, Ray Allen, is wealthy from party money. Allen’s Creative Direct, LLC is not just on the Republican Party of Virginia’s payroll, it represents the single largest expenditure on the party’s 2013 campaign finance disclosures.Sound like a fair primary landscape for Cantor’s opponent, Dave Brat?  Should Eric Cantor survive this primary on June 10, he...

Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg's pro-amnesty organization FWD.us bought deceptive advertisements to help Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-NC) defeat underfunded primary challenger Frank Roche in Tuesday's North Carolina primary. The group promptly celebrated Ellmers' win. FWD.us's Joe Green said that Ellmers' victory "makes clear" that "the time is now for House Republicans to bring" amnesty legislation to the floor. Lobbying groups like FWD.us want high-tech visas that will lower the wages of American workers, even though no evidence suggests there is a shortage of American high-tech workers.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor won’t allow attempts next week to include a measure on a must-pass defense policy bill that would legalize young undocumented immigrants who serve in the military. A spokesman confirmed Friday that the legislation, known as the Enlist Act, will not be among those debated with the National Defense Authorization Act, an annual bill that sets policy for the Pentagon. Rep. Jeff Denham (R-Calif.), the Enlist Act’s chief sponsor, had pledged to bring it up as part of the floor battle over the defense bill.

Surprise action outside Denver's Brown Palace Hotel this morning, as a press release from a coalition of groups including Together Colorado and the Colorado Immigration Reform Coalition (CIRC) explains: Outside a fundraiser headlined by House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) for Rep. Mike Coffman (R-CO) today, local leaders staged a rally to protest the fact that these three House Republicans are key obstacles standing in the way of immigration reform that would keep Colorado immigrant families together. It has been 322 days since the Senate passed a bipartisan immigration bill, but Speaker Boehner and House...

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor changed direction entirely Friday, saying through a spokesman that he doesn’t plan to allow any amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would grant amnesty to illegal aliens through the ENLIST Act. “No proposed ENLIST amendments to NDAA will be made in order,” Cantor spokesman Doug Heye said in an email to Breitbart News. The statement represents a complete turnaround for Cantor, who just a couple weeks ago was the leading and most powerful force behind the effort to insert a version of Rep. Jeff Denham’s ENLIST Act into the NDAA bill. Denham’s...

Proof that the GOP’s terrified of an immigration backlash from the right in November? Or proof that Eric Cantor in particular is terrified of losing his primary? I’ll accept “both” as an answer. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor will block attempts next week to include a measure on a must-pass defense policy bill that would legalize young undocumented immigrants who serve in the military. A spokesman confirmed Friday that the legislation, known as the Enlist Act, will not be among those debated with the National Defense Authorization Act, an annual bill that sets policy for the Pentagon. Rep. Jeff Denham...

Sal Russo, co-founder of the Tea Party Express, announced his support for amnesty on Wednesday, reversing his organization’s statement from a year ago that it would not take a position on immigration reform. If you take a look at Russo’s background, this isn’t exactly the revelation that some in the media are making it out to be. What’s interesting, though, is the dichotomy between Russo’s position and the principles of the organization he helped to create. The Tea Party Express bills itself as anti-establishment, but Russo’s immigration proposal is nearly identical to the principles pushed by GOP House Leaders --...

Barack Obama opens the prisons as Round 1 in his amnesty scheme A few thousand murderers, rapists, kidnappers and other violent thugs are on the streets, thanks to Barack Obama for handing out a “get out of jail free card” to aliens in the country illegally, no matter how many felonies he or she may have committed. The Center for Immigration Studies provides proof that, last year, federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials “freed 36,007 convicted criminal aliens from detention who were awaiting the outcome of deportation proceedings.” Those 36,000-plus perps weren’t in jail for jaywalking or keeping a...

On August 30, 2013, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers published in its journal Spectrum, “The STEM Crisis Is a Myth.” The IEEE article reports that within the United States – [T]here are more STEM workers than suitable jobs. One study found, for example, that wages for U.S. workers in computer and math fields have largely stagnated since 2000. Even as the Great Recession slowly recedes, STEM workers at every stage of the career pipeline, from freshly minted grads to mid- and late-career Ph.D.s, still struggle to find employment as many companies, including Boeing, IBM, and Symantec, continue to...

Just a few miles from his family home, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) felt the wrath of the tea party Saturday, when activists in his congressional district booed and heckled the second-most powerful House Republican. They also elected one of their own to lead Virginia’s 7th Congressional District Republican Committee, turning their back on Cantor’s choice for a post viewed as crucial by both tea party and establishment wings in determining control of the fractured state GOP. Former lieutenant governor Bill Bolling, pushed out of last year’s governor’s race by a similar party schism, said he was “extremely disappointed”...

Just a few miles from his family home, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) felt the wrath of the tea party Saturday, when activists in his congressional district booed and heckled the second-most powerful House Republican. They also elected one of their own to lead Virginia’s 7th Congressional District Republican Committee, turning their back on Cantor’s choice for a post viewed as crucial by both tea party and establishment wings in determining control of the fractured state GOP.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) thinks there’s still hope for immigration reform this year, but only if Democrats are willing to negotiate. “People have to acknowledge that the Democrats, if they want it passed, have to make more of a compromise,” he said in a talk to students at Harvard's Institute of Politics on Friday. Paul envisions that compromise as some sort of legal status — “status and a place for people here so that they can come out of the shadows, let them begin paying taxes, let them not be locked up and having them run from the authorities,” he...

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor is a rising star in national politics, but here at home, he’s at the center of a battle with fellow Republicans. His allies are maneuvering to pack leadership slots at the Republican Party of Virginia with like-minded figures — a move they hope will bring stability to a party with little money and lots of infighting. That’s infuriated some local conservatives, who feel they are being squeezed out of positions of power and aren’t going down without a fight. They are rallying behind insurgent primary challenger Dave Brat, an economics professor with just $40,000 in...

The House could come up with a bill to overhaul the country’s immigration system by August, according to the House’s No. 4 Republican. “I believe there is a path that we get a bill on the floor by August,” Rep. Cathy McMorris-Rodgers (R-Wash.) the Republican conference chairwoman, told The Spokesman-Review last week. An August deadline would resolve the troubled issue months before November’s midterm elections, where the GOP is looking to grow its advantage in the House and pick up enough seats to take over the Senate. Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has pushed for a bill and even mocked members...

The Wall Street Journal reported last night that House Speaker John Boehner told donors at a fundraiser last month in Las Vegas that he was “hellbent on getting this done this year,” in reference to an amnesty/immigration bill. His spokesman did not dispute the account. In related news, President Obama is meeting with the National Commander of the American Legion this morning. Ordinarily, that would mean little, but the meeting comes just days after the Legion came out against a plan to amnesty illegal aliens who join the military. The number of people who would benefit from such an amnesty...

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), the ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee and arguably the leading intellectual force against amnesty in Congress, is coming out hard against a proposal backed by Majority Leader Eric Cantor to grant amnesty to illegal alien DREAMers who enlist in the military. “We are now in a period of very large troop reductions. The last thing this nation should be doing is to provide those few slots to persons who illegally entered the United States or who overstayed their visas while denying young Americans the ability to serve their country,” Sessions said in a written...

The Threat of Cheap Denham: Don’t be fooled by press accounts that downplay the significance of Rep. Jeff Denham’s attempt to add something called the ENLIST Act to the defense authorization (NDAA) bill. It’s a significant push for a substantial immigration amnesty, and it has a good chance of succeeding. Opponents of an “Amnesty First” approach to immigration should be worried. Here’s why: – On the surface, it looks like Denham’s amendment would give amnesty only to an almost comically appealing group of illegal immigrants: “DREAMers” who were brought to this country when they were young and who also serve...

Democrat Mike Dickinson recently promised to wage “war” on the NRA, Tea Party and Fox News. On Thursday, he was confronted by Greta Van Susteren in a tense exchange that ended with an embarrassing admission. “Why do you hate me?” Van Susteren asked, immediately getting to business. Dickinson, who apparently is not actually running for Congress, said he has a problem with her network as a whole. “Well, but no, what about me? I’m Fox News, I’m ‘trash,’ apparently, so what’s wrong with me?” the TV host responded. Dickinson conceded that he didn’t have a problem with Van Susteren personally,...

ForAmerica chairman Brent Bozell is excoriating House Majority Leader Eric Cantor for attending a tropical summit hosted by an organization working to marginalize the Tea Party movement. “Conservative leaders were stunned to learn that you will be headlining a conference in Florida this weekend that is, purely and simply, a direct attack on Tea Party conservatives,” Bozell wrote to Cantor on Tuesday in a letter obtained exclusively by Breitbart News. At issue is Cantor’s decision to attend and speak at a conference this weekend on Amelia Island in Northeast Florida. The event is being hosted by “Main Street Advocacy,” a...