Thread: The Senate's anti-immigration warrior

Jeff Sessions was agitator-in-chief during the DHS fight. Now, he's moving to the next battle.

By Seung Min Kim
3/5/15 5:35 AM EST
Updated 3/5/15 6:48 AM EST


AP Photo

The Homeland Security crisis might be over, but Sen. Jeff Sessions is just getting started.

The rosy-cheeked, conservative Alabaman with a distinct Southern drawl became Capitol Hill’s agitator-in-chief during the impasse over President Barack Obama’s immigration actions and the Department of Homeland Security. Mocked by the left, beloved by the hard-right and at times bothersome to fellow Republicans, Sessions rallied his party in the weeks-long standoff that ended with GOP capitulation.

But the fourth-term senator is quickly moving on from defeat to his next crusade: attacking high-skilled immigration.

Using his new gavel on the Senate immigration panel, Sessions said he plans to hold oversight hearings on H-1B visas that benefit high-skilled immigrants — one of the tech industry’s top priorities in Washington. Sessions has been in touch with tech employees who say they’ve been laid off in favor of foreign workers. And his office recently conducted a staff briefing for Senate aides, outlining what they say are abuses to the H-1B system.

“We’ve got to ask — which hasn’t been asked — what does all this do to the ability of a college graduate who’s living at home with his parents because he can’t find a job?” Sessions said in a recent interview outlining his plans. “One thing that’s accepted almost without debate is that we need more of those workers, and that’s not accurate. And we’re going to prove that’s not accurate.”

Sessions has long been a critic not just of legalizing undocumented immigrants but also of allowing more immigrants into the United States at all — a view to which many in the GOP take exception. And though Republicans largely agreed early on to use DHS funding as leverage over Obama on immigration, GOP support for that position waned as the impasse continued, and Sessions ultimately relented, too.

The former federal prosecutor and Alabama attorney general has gravitated to immigration issues since he arrived in Congress in 1997. But his interest grew into an obsession in 2006 and 2007, when Sessions helped scuttle comprehensive reform in the Senate during President George W. Bush’s tenure.

Since then, he’s been working to stop immigration ideas from the left and right. When the Senate took up a sweeping immigration overhaul from the Gang of Eight in 2013, Sessions methodically went about trying to kill the bill with amendments viewed as poison pills and by driving up public opposition with a drumbeat of floor speeches and statements. The legislation passed the Senate but went nowhere in the House, where Sessions worked to gin up opposition among Republican hard-liners.

More recently, he strategized with House conservatives to devise a response to last summer’s border crisis, when unaccompanied migrant children from Central America were being apprehended at the southern border in record numbers. And this year, he lobbied against a border-security bill written by House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mike McCaul (R-Texas). That legislation was pulled from the House floor and has not been back since.

“I am in a minority in the U.S. Senate … in questioning whether we should reward people who came into the country illegally with jobs that Americans would like to do,” Sessions said. “But with the American people, I am in a distinct majority.”

Now Sessions is moving to line up opposition against H-1B visas in case Senate Republicans move forward on legislation. Building a more robust high-tech workforce through immigration has been a rare area of agreement between the two parties, even as the H-1B issue itself has stalled over the years.

Earlier this year, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) introduced the so-called Immigration Innovation — or “I-Squared” — which would boost the number of H-1B visas issued each year to as high as 195,000. Currently, the H-1B cap is set at 65,000 annually, though an extra 20,000 visas are set aside for immigrants with a master’s degree or higher from a U.S. school. The measure is backed by a handful of Senate Democrats and key Republicans, including Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida, John McCain of Arizona and Jeff Flake of Arizona.

But it’s unclear how far that legislation will go. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said Wednesday he has no plans “at this point” to take up Hatch’s bill.

“I want to get his advice first,” Grassley said of Sessions before moving forward with the measure.

Sessions is now in a position to wield more influence on immigration policy as the newly installed chairman of the Senate panel that oversees the issue. The gavel of the subcommittee was seen as a consolation prize of sorts, after he bowed out of the race to lead the Senate Budget Committee.

In his long fight against immigration, Sessions has rallied support from leading conservative voices such as Rich Lowry of National Review and talk show host Laura Ingraham, who regularly praises Sessions for his immigration stance and has even said he should run for president in 2016.

“Overall, Sen. Jeff Sessions has probably done the best work on behalf of the American people in the fight to protect American jobs from illegal aliens of every person in Washington, D.C.,” Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) said. “There has not been a close second.”

His popularity in Alabama is unparalleled, the state’s lawmakers say, and notably, Sessions was the only Republican senator up for reelection last year who did not have a primary or a general election challenger.

But his public life has some dark patches. In 1986, he was chosen by President Ronald Reagan to be a federal judge, but his nomination was rejected in the Senate amid allegations that he was racially insensitive as a U.S. attorney — accusations that Sessions dismissed at the time.

And immigration reform advocates have long cast him as anti-immigrant.

“The people he talks to represent a sliver of the American people, a portion of the Republican base and not the changing America that is transforming the electorate,” said Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice, who has battled Sessions for years. “You go, Jeff. Hasten the demise of your party so we can pass immigration reform.”

Sessions’ willingness to fight fellow Republicans was clear during the DHS battle, particularly when he stood up in a private party lunch and castigated a plan from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to split off must-pass DHS funding from provisions blocking Obama’s actions on immigration. Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) countered that the leader’s strategy was the only way out that wouldn’t hamper local law enforcement agencies that rely on DHS grants.

In the POLITICO interview, Sessions said the confrontation during the closed-door meeting was “absolutely” worth it.

“I told my colleagues the truth as I saw it. I think everybody knew I was telling the truth,” he added. “The leadership had made a decision how they wanted to handle it, and people tend to follow the leader. And so I don’t regret [it], and I don’t think anybody should have hard feelings about what I said then.”

When asked whether Sessions and his crusade made it difficult for Republicans in the DHS battle, Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn of Texas replied: “Not really.”

“He cares a lot about the Constitution and the rule of law, and I think he is understandably outraged at what the president has done,” Cornyn said of Sessions recently. “So he’s been perhaps the most vocal member of our conference, although I think a number of us have tried to do our fair share.”

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/0...on-115777.html

GO GET 'EM JEFF SESSIONS! You are the warrior on this issue and we love you pieces for all you do for our nation to stop this insanity. Lets get some fruition this year on some good bills and start cleaning up this mess.