Thread: Dems brace for immigration battle

Dems brace for immigration battle



10/24/16 06:00 AM EDT

Democrats are bracing for a fierce fight over immigration on Capitol Hill if Hillary Clinton wins the White House on Nov. 8.

Clinton has promised to send a comprehensive immigration reform bill to Congress within her first 100 days in office if elected, and Hispanic groups plan to make sure she keeps her word.

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), who stands to become the new Senate majority leader if Democrats win control of the upper chamber, has also staked out immigration reform as a top priority, though he won’t discuss timing.But the prospect of a battle on immigration reform is causing jitters among Senate Democrats.

The party must defend 25 seats in the next election cycle, including seats in Republican-leaning states such as Indiana, North Dakota, West Virginia, Missouri and Montana — all of which Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump seems likely to win.
Vulnerable Democrats facing reelection in 2018 know that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) will seek to use an immigration reform bill against them.

“McConnell will be on the immediate hunt to win back the Republican majority, and the 2018ers will be gun-shy out of the gate,” said one senior Senate Democratic aide.

“They’re worried about what can get done before 2018. They’re already freaking out.”

The other big piece of legislation many see as coming down the pike if Clinton is elected is an infrastructure investment package.

While liberal and centrist Democrats broadly support a push for infrastructure spending, some Democrats would rather see Clinton emphasize that issue over immigration. They say they want her to focus on jobs and the economy instead of becoming embroiled in a bitter, partisan fight over immigration reform — which they also argue could make an infrastructure push more difficult.

“You have only a couple of bites at the apple in your honeymoon,” the Democratic aide added, referring to the first hundred days of the new administration.

“Getting something done that can pass the House like an infrastructure bill is a benefit to the 2018ers. That will be at the front of everyone’s mind,” the source said. “They’ll be worried about passing immigration reform.”

Clinton’s campaign staff says she is equally committed to moving an infrastructure investment package and immigration reform in the first few months of the priority and doesn’t see it as an either/or proposition.

“In terms of big legislative items, she has said she wants to prioritize comprehensive immigration reform and an infrastructure jobs package in the first hundred days,” said Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon.

“Both of those issues are things that she’s discussed all the way through from the primary to the general. They are priorities that are consensus proposals that have strong support in the country, and thirdly they are both things that in a normal environment Republicans in the past have been inclined to support,” he added.

Fallon noted that Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) in concept supports both infrastructure investment and immigration reform.

“If she wins, it will be in the best interests of Republicans to want to work on those things since they are consensus proposals,” he said.

Clinton and other Democrats pushing immigration reform are betting that Republicans will conduct a post-election analysis — similar to the report produced after Mitt Romney lost to President Obama in 2012 — that will find they need to improve the party’s standing among Hispanic voters.

That, they think, will give Ryan and other Republican leaders strong incentive to work with Democrats on immigration reform instead of turning it into a partisan fight to knock off vulnerable red-state Democrats in 2018.

“I would expect if Hillary Clinton is successful, Republicans will again face a scenario similar to the 2012 aftermath where they penned an entire autopsy saying they needed to get right with key constituencies, including by enacting comprehensive immigration reform,” Fallon said.
Schumer told NBC’s John Harwood in an interview this week that he thinks both immigration reform and an infrastructure package can pass in the new Congress.

He said both policies come to mind because they are backed by Clinton, Ryan and himself.
Schumer predicted that “mainstream conservatives in the Senate and House” will tell “the hard right,” who are staunchly opposed to immigration reform, to “go take a hike” if they try to quash reform.

Schumer, however, is staying away from getting into any details on timing and what the bill might look like until after he knows if Democrats will have a Senate majority — and how big it is.

“We’ll wait and see. These are all the conversations that happen in a transition or early next year. We’re not going to speculate one way or the other,” said a Senate Democratic aide.

The Senate approved comprehensive immigration reform legislation in 2013 with 68 votes. Every Senate Democrat backed it, including vulnerable members, some of whom were defeated in 2014 when the party lost its majority. Thirteen Republicans also voted for the package.

But the bill died in the GOP-controlled House when then-Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) refused to bring a companion measure to the floor.

Some Democrats question whether the politics of the issue have changed after the emergence of strong anti-immigrant sentiment in the Republican presidential primary.

Trump won the GOP nomination by pledging to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and taking a much harder stance against illegal immigration. He reiterated in Wednesday’s debate that giving illegal residents a path to citizenship would be unfair to millions of people who have waited in line to enter the country legally.

There is also skepticism about whether Ryan, who some think could be a White House contender himself in 2020, would schedule votes on immigration reform — especially a package that includes a path to citizenship, as Clinton wants.

Ryan’s office said Friday that he hopes he won’t be working with Clinton next year.

“Our focus right now is on defeating Democrats including Hillary,” said AshLee Strong, Ryan’s spokeswoman.

Grover Norquist, the anti-tax activist who is close with Republican leaders and has backed immigration reform, predicts that it will be very difficult to pass immigration reform next year because Republicans don’t trust Clinton.

“Just because there just isn't the trust, it's awfully tough to do this thing," he said. "Comprehensive [reform] is when you at least trust the other guy enough that when you walk out the door everything will get done,” he said.

Brent Wilkes, the national executive director of the League of United Latin American Citizens, which supports comprehensive immigration reform, said that former Sen. Ken Salazar (D-Colo.), who is heading Clinton’s transition team, has promised advocacy groups that the issue will be a top priority.

He acknowledged, however, that advocacy groups feel they need to reach out to white working-class voters who back Trump to repair the damage they feel this year’s divisive debate has done to their cause.

While Trump is trailing in the polls in several moderate Senate battlegrounds this year, such as New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, he is doing well in red states where Senate Democrats face reelection in 2018, such as Indiana and Missouri.

http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/3...f-clinton-wins

Hopefully the Republican Congress can see that accomplishing any of this agenda is the end of them. The two major foundations of the Democrat Machine are right in this article----Integrate the immigrants, and put them to work on construction projects.

It is a sign of how weakened our state has become when people who are not constituents and not lawfully admitted here figure they can control and direct domestic policy. Hearing Obama's remarks today one thing was clear---the Dem 'brand' is everything. He didn't say one word about the wisdom of his vision, just that it was better than the other side.

I think Democrats are in for a really big surprise.

by JULIA HAHN
25 Oct 2016
Washington D.C

The Hill reports that Democratic lawmakers are planning to swiftly push to enact immigration amnesty if Hilary Clinton is elected President.

According to the report, these prominent Democrats understand that Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan supports amnesty and believes that Republicans like Ryan will tell conservatives who oppose Clinton’s amnesty legislation to “go take a hike.”

“Democrats are bracing for a fierce fight over immigration on Capitol Hill if Hillary Clinton wins the White House on Nov. 8,” The Hill reports. “Clinton has promised to send a comprehensive immigration reform bill to Congress within her first 100 days in office if elected…”

Clinton’s campaign website has made clear that by “comprehensive immigration reform,” Clinton means citizenship for illegal immigrants, which would give them welfare access, voting privileges, and the ability to bring over their family members through chain migration.

According to the report, Clinton’s staff and allies understand that Speaker Ryan supports amnesty, and, as such, they view him as the key to enacting Clinton’s immigration agenda.

“[Clinton campaign spokesman Brian] Fallon noted that Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) in concept supports both infrastructure investment and immigration reform,” The Hill reports.

“[Sen. Chuck] Schumer told NBC’s John Harwood in an interview this week that he thinks both immigration reform and an infrastructure package can pass in the new Congress. He said both policies come to mind because they are backed by Clinton, Ryan and himself,” The Hill writes.

Schumer predicted that Republicans like Ryan will tell conservatives who oppose Clinton’s immigration agenda to “go take a hike,” according to the report: “Schumer predicted that ‘mainstream conservatives in the Senate and House’ will tell ‘the hard right,’ who are staunchly opposed to immigration reform, to ‘go take a hike’ if they try to quash reform.”

The report seems to reinforce predictions previously made by Sen. Tim Kaine, who has said that under a President Clinton and Speaker Ryan, amnesty would be enacted within the first 100 days of a Clinton-Kaine administration.

The Center for Immigration Studies’ Steve Camarota has projected that if Clinton were able to pass legislation similar to the 2013 Rubio-Schumer immigration bill, which she supported, Clinton could potentially add 10 million new immigrants to the U.S. during her first term alone, in addition to the 11 million illegal immigrants to whom she plans to immediately grant amnesty.
In a private speech made public by WikiLeaks, Clinton told Goldman Sachs executives that Americans who want to limit immigration are “fundamentally un-American”—an astonishing statement given the fact that according to Pew polling data, 83 percent of the American electorate would like to see immigration levels frozen or reduced.

Only 15 percent of American voters—and seven percent of Republican voters—agree with the Clinton-Ryan vision of increasing immigration.

Given Ryan’s record on the issue, it is not surprising Democrats believe he will help advance their 2017 efforts to enact amnesty. As a 2015 PBS documentary revealed, in 2013 and 2014 Ryan worked behind closed doors with Democratic Rep. Luis Gutierrez and other pro-amnesty Republicans to craft an immigration bill and whip House Republicans to support the donor-class’s immigration expansion agenda. PBS reported that Ryan’s stealth effort was nearly successful—having crafted a bill that he knew the majority of Republicans could support. According to the PBS documentary, had it not been for Eric Cantor’s ejection as House Majority Leader, then-Speaker John Boehner likely would have brought Ryan’s bill up for a vote and his amnesty plan likely would have passed.

In 2015, immediately following Ryan’s announcement that he was running for House Speaker, conservatives expressed concern that his Speakership would ultimately lead to an amnesty push in 2017. As one senior GOP aide told Breitbart News last year, “Speaker Ryan will usher through the most detrimental bill in modern America. He will enjoy working with Luis Gutierrez to craft it, and President Anyone-but-Trump will celebrate signing it into law.”

At the time, nationally syndicated radio host Rush Limbaugh warned that the effort to install Ryan as House Speaker was all about getting “the donor-class agenda… implemented, including amnesty and whatever else they want. That is the objective here. That’s what I think this all adds up to,” Limbaugh said.

As Breitbart News previously reported, Ryan has a long history of advocating for globalist policies on trade and immigration. Indeed, Ryan shares Clinton’s support for open borders and supports the importation of foreign workers to compete against American white-collar and blue-collar workers. As NBC’s Chuck Todd has explained, Ryan is “an internationalist” who supports the “open borders” ideology on immigration.

Bernie Sanders told Vox in 2015 that “open borders” is “a Koch brothers proposal” that “would make everybody in America poorer” by allowing employers to “bring in all kinds of people [who will] work for $2 or $3 an hour.” Sanders said that “open borders… says essentially there is no United States” and amounts to “doing away with the concept of a nation-state.”

The shared globalist agenda of establishment Republicans, Democrats, and their wealthy corporate donors prompted far-left Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein to denounce Hillary Clinton as a member of Washington’s corrupt, corporatist “uni-party”.

“Both Democrats and Republicans are funded by big corporate interests,” Stein wrote, noting that Washington’s “uni-party” works to advance the goals of its transnational donors rather than the desires of the American electorate. Stein and her party have argued that the Democratic and Republican parties that “cuddle up to Wall Street and special interests” essentially “agree on [a] neoliberal agenda” of “globalization… [and] austerity for the rest of us.”

http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presid...-amnesty-push/