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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....

<p>The Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) is creating a high-level bipartisan task force on immigration - co-chaired by former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, former HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros, and former Governors Haley Barbour and Ed Rendell - to develop a politically viable package of policy recommendations and work with Congress to help pass immigration reform.</p>

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has hired a new expert on immigration policy, a move that could signal a renewed House effort to act on the issue in 2014. Rebecca Tallent, director of immigration policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, will start her new job as assistant to the Speaker on Wednesday. Her arrival was one of a series of personnel moves Boehner announced on Tuesday. Former Gov. Haley Barbour (R-Miss.), a co-chairman of the think tank’s immigration task force, said Boehner’s decision to bring in Tallent was “affirmation of his strong desire to move legislation in 2014.”

House Speaker John A. Boehner has hired a longtime advocate of legalizing illegal immigrants to be his immigration policy adviser... Rebecca Tallent, whom Mr. Boehner’s office confirmed it was hiring, worked on immigration issues for Sen. John McCain and former Rep. Jim Kolbe

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) has hired Rebecca Tallent to work on immigration reform. She is currently the immigration policy director at the Bipartisan Policy Center. "The Speaker remains hopeful that we can enact step-by-step, common-sense immigration reforms -- the kind of reforms the American people understand and support," said Michael Steel, a spokesman for Boehner. "Becky Tallent, a well-known expert in this field of public policy, is a great addition to our team and that effort." According to her BPC bio, Tallent has worked as a policy aide on immigration and energy issues to Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-AZ) and...

U.S. House Speaker John Boehner is "sincere" in wanting immigration reform and applauds President Obama for accepting a piecemeal approach, a spokesman said. "The speaker is sincere in wanting to get something done, and we're pleased the president said he can accept the step-by-step approach we're taking in the House," Brandan Buck, a spokesman for the Ohio Republican, told The Washington Post after Obama used the word sincere to characterize Boehner's desire. "I believe the speaker is sincere. I think he genuinely wants to get it done," Obama told an audience at a San Francisco community center. "And that's something...

Earlier this year, as House Republicans began considering changes to the nation's immigration laws after their party's defeat in the presidential election, they were given a list of do's and don'ts that updated GOP thinking on the issue. The suggestions seemed obvious to most but signaled a new tone for the Republican Party. "Don't use the term'anchor baby' or phrases like 'send them all back,'" said the memo from a Republican-aligned advocacy group, the Hispanic Leadership Network. -snip- Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia, would provide a path to citizenship for young people brought to the U.S. illegally as minors....

-snip- Ball quotes two different pro-amnesty activists as part of the plan pushing for revenge: Frank Sharry of America’s Voice and Joshua Culling of Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), Grover Norquist’s outfit. -snip- Ball described Culling as a “conservative,” even though it was just discovered the outfit he works for, ATR, is funded largely by Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS. According to tax documents released by Crossroads, Rove’s group gave ATR $26 million in 2012. Rove is actively working against conservatives nationwide in an effort to stop the Tea Party movement. His funding of Norquist’s organization--which has supported amnesty and publicly...

Republicans in the House who refuse to take on immigration reform don’t have much to fear from voters, according to a number of political experts. Despite public support for reform and the increase in Latino voters, this demographic has little clout in GOP-controlled districts. “Immigration reform policy still ranks comparatively much lower in importance compared to the economy, job creation, the federal deficit, job and healthcare,” said Daniel Cox, research director at the Public Religion Research Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization in Washington. That’s because immigration reform still has relatively little support compared with more immediate concerns over the...

President Obama on Monday will call on Congress to pass “commonsense immigration reform,” according to a White House official. Obama will speak Monday morning in San Francisco, urging House Republicans to take up the issue as soon as possible. Obama will highlight key principles that must be a part of any bipartisan comprehensive effort, the official said, including continuing to strengthen border security, creating an earned path to citizenship, holding employers accountable and bringing our immigration system into the 21st century. The White House says immigration reform has strong, bipartisan support across the country. Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on Sunday...

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi was furious with Speaker John Boehner a week ago over immigration reform — but now she says she’d be open to a piecemeal approach if that’s what the Ohio Republican wants to do. “We have always said on that score that the speaker is the speaker, and any way he wants to bring the bill to the floor, in pieces or in big chunks or whatever it is, we just want to see legislation come to the floor so that Congress can act upon that legislation, the House can, and send it to the conference...

John Boehner thinks President Obama is finally coming around to his position on immigration. What is Boehner position on immigration, you ask? Good question! On Thursday, Boehner offered rare praise for Obama, who had said earlier in the week he was open to passing immigration via a series of small individual bills rather than the Senate’s large comprehensive bill. House leaders have said for months the Senate bill would not receive a vote and that they’d only move forward with a piecemeal approach.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) reaffirmed his commitment to enacting immigration reform, a week after the chances of an overhaul appeared dead following his comments that he would not support negotiating with the Senate on its comprehensive bill. “Is immigration reform dead?” Boehner told reporters. “Absolutely not.”

SCOTTSDALE, ARIZ. — Many Republicans, with eyes trained on the presidential election in 2016, have sorted through the wreckage of the 2012 elections to figure out how and why the GOP suffered such heavy losses, including the White House. But at the Republican Governors Association conference in Arizona on Wednesday, one theory dominated at an early panel discussion: That the X-factor Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney lacked might have been a more compassionate tone. "People have to know that you care about them," said Ohio Gov. John Kasich, one of the governors believed to be weighing a presidential bid in...

A group of New Jerseyans reportedly embarked on an 150-mile journey across New Jersey today to support granting in-state tuition at state colleges and universities for undocumented immigrants... ( snip ) Along the journey, the group hopes to meet with New Jersey lawmakers, including U.S. Rep. Rob Andrews (D-1st Dist.), U.S. Rep. Jon Runyan (R-3rd Dist.), U.S. Rep. Chris Smith (R-4th Dist.) and U.S. Rep. Frank LoBiondo (R-2nd Dist.),The Tretonian reported. The state Senate today approved a bill allowing undocumented students to pay in-state tuition and qualify for state financial aid programs... ( snip ) Gov. Chris Christie has expressed...

The Senate’s immigration bill would transfer another eight House seats to Democratic-dominated states before many of the extra immigrants become citizens, according to a new study by the Center on Immigration Studies. Three seats will shift in 2020 because the census counts everyone — including non-citizen immigrants, guest-workers and illegal immigrants — when it reapportions the House’s 435 seats among the 50 states. Another five seats would be moved by the 2030 census if the bill becomes law, said Steven Camarota, the author of the study and the research director at the center. “Everybody agrees that the immigrants and their...