Thread: The House GOP should do nothing on immigration.

Don't Do It

January 27, 2014 12:00 PM
The Editors
National Review



The House Republican leadership has been confronted by devilishly difficult tactical choices over the years. But what to do on the issue of immigration right now isn’t one of them. The correct course is easy and eminently achievable: Do nothing.

The old Reagan catchphrase calling for non-action — don’t just do something, stand there — has never been more apt. Yet the House leadership is about to roll out a set of immigration principles reportedly including an amnesty for illegal aliens, and presumably will follow up with a push to pass them through the House. This is legislative strategy as unforced error.

The basic tactical reason not to act now is that the last thing the party needs is a brutal intramural fight when it has been dealt a winning hand on Obamacare. It is not as though the public is clamoring for an immigration bill. Only 3 percent cited immigration as the biggest problem facing the country in a Gallup poll earlier this month. In the key contests that will decide partisan control of the Senate, Republican candidates are much more likely to be helped than hurt by refusing to sign onto any form of amnesty.

The other prudential reason not to act is that President Obama obviously can’t be trusted. Any immigration deal would have to trade enhanced enforcement for an amnesty. Since the president refuses to enforce key provisions of his own health-care law, let alone provisions of immigration law he finds uncongenial, he obviously can’t be relied on to follow up on his end of any bargain. It is hard to fathom how any Republican can possibly believe otherwise.

Finally, the path set out by the House leadership will — if the early reports are to be believed — represent bad policy. Unfortunately, many Republicans have convinced themselves that the key question is whether or not illegal immigrants eventually get citizenship, and insist that only a law that creates a “path to citizenship” is amnesty. They are wrong on both counts. The central question is whether illegal immigrants are allowed to work and live here legally. As soon as they are, that’s the amnesty. For most of these immigrants, eventual citizenship will be an afterthought.

The leadership is also likely to sign on to increased levels of legal immigration. In this it reflects the obsession of the business establishment, for which the answer to the dire employment crisis among low-skilled workers is always to import more low-skilled workers. We salute Senator Jeff Sessions for blowing the whistle on this folly and relentlessly making the pro-worker case against ever-higher levels of immigration.

We believe in incremental immigration reform, but pace the Republican House leadership, that doesn’t mean simply chopping up the Gang of Eight bill and passing its constituent parts piecemeal. It means insisting on real enforcement, including an E-Verify system to confirm the legal status of workers and an exit-entry system to track foreign visitors, that is up and running before anything else passes. Then there can be the grand bargain of the sort outlined by Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies in our latest issue, trading an amnesty for lower levels of legal immigration.

For now, nothing worth having can pass the Democratic Senate or get signed into law by President Obama. Rank-and-file conservatives in the House should firmly reject the course that their leadership wants to take, and convince it to reconsider. We hope, in short, that they make a clarion call for inaction.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articl...-do-it-editors

by John Nolte 27 Jan 2014, 12:54 PM PDT

Monday morning, MSNBC's Joe Scarborough warned that the one thing that could cost the GOP control of the Senate this year would be to pass immigration reform. That same day the editors of National Review shouted "don't do it" with the warning that history proves "President Obama obviously can’t be trusted" to abide by any kind immigration deal.

Though not in a way the media, GOP Establishment, big business, and Barack Obama would like, it looks as though conservatives, the grassroots, and various elements of the Republican Party are unifying on this issue. National Review's reasoning starts with the obvious, that immigration reform is only seen as a priority by 3% of the American people and therefore hardly the burning issue the media and Democrats pretend it is.

"The other prudential reason not to act is that President Obama obviously can’t be trusted," NR writes. "Any immigration deal would have to trade enhanced enforcement for an amnesty. Since the president refuses to enforce … provisions of immigration law he finds uncongenial, he obviously can’t be relied on to follow up on his end of any bargain."

If President Obama has proven anything during his time in office it is that he has no regard for the rule of law or the Constitutional wisdom of divided government. Tomorrow, Obama is promising a State of the Union address where he will flaunt his "pen and phone" promise to ignore Congress. The president makes no secret of these things. To trust him to enforce a border that keep Democrats out is utter folly.

Like many conservatives, including myself, NR believes "in incremental immigration reform." Going to conference with the Gang of Eight's disaster of a Senate bill is a trap that will do to immigration what ObamaCare has done to healthcare (the Senate bill is a bureaucratic boondoggle).

This sucker move to appease big business and the almost-always-wrong consultant class will also cost the GOP control of the Senate in 2014 after the disgusted grassroots ask "what's the difference?" and stay home on Election Day.

Win the Senate, increase your hold on the House, and craft sensible reform in 2015. Sen. Marco Rubio paid a heavy political price for his role in writing and passing that Senate disaster. If the GOP can't see that Rubio was the canary in the coalmine, they really are hopeless.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Governm...gration-reform

First article added to the HP
http://www.alipac.us/content.php?r=2...ty-immigration

Boehner Says Out Loud He Hopes Blacks and Latinos 'Won't Show Up' This Election

House Speaker John Boehner is the most prominent Republican to admit, out loud, that his party's strategy for winning in November doesn't suppose that the GOP can win over some black and Latino voters, but hopes they won't vote at all. Boehner wasn't talking about voter I.D. laws, which are being pushed by Republicans and criticized as disenfranchising minority and poor voters, he did tell a luncheon hosted by the Christian Science Monitor in Tampa Monday that the Republican Party was counting on apathy from the Latinos and blacks who are choosing Democrats over Republicans by record margins in recent polls. As Talking Point Memo's Benjy Sarlin reports, Boehner said:

“This election is about economics… These groups have been hit the hardest. They may not show up and vote for our candidate but I’d suggest to you they won’t show up and vote for the president either.”

http://news.yahoo.com/boehner-says-l...185558772.html