Thread: Pro-Illegal Anaylzes House and Senate

From ImmigrationVoice.org

As is evident by now, the House has gone to Democrats in a landslide; the Senate is on its way depending on outcome in Virginia . A Democrat win in VA (Jim Webb in VA) means the Democrats would control the Senate too.

What it means for us:

Change of control in the House:
This is of biggest consequence. Since Democrats won the House, every chairman of every committee in the house will be a Democrat. They will decide what goes into each committee, what comes out of the committee, what gets floored on the house floor and when. They set the agenda, they set the timetable. They run everything...including what gets served in the House Cafeteria and who occupies which office and who gets how much budget to run their offices. Republicans in the last few years have followed the mantra of “Majority of the majority” when it came to setting the agenda and timetable of house floor votes. What this did was, bills such as the CIR, that would have otherwise passed by the majority of 435 votes by combining Democrats plus moderate Republicans never got floor time, since the majority of majority (conservative republicans) were against such bills and by that token non-receptive to the legal variety of immigration.

The new Democratic committee chairmen in the House will likely be the following:

Agriculture--Collin Peterson (MN)
Appropriations--David Obey (WI)
Energy & Water Subcommittee--Peter Visclosky (IN)
Armed Services--Ike Skelton (MO)
Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces--Silvestre Reyes (IN)
Budget--John Spratt (SC)
Energy and Commerce--John Dingell (MI)
Education and the Workforce --George Miller (CA)Financial Services--Barney Frank (MA)
Government Reform--Henry Waxman (CA)
Homeland Security--Bennie Thompson (MS)
Intelligence-- uncertain--either Jane Harman (CA), Alcee Hastings (FL) or Silvestre Reyes (TX)
International Relations--Tom Lantos (CA)
Judiciary--John Conyers (MI)
Transportation--Jim Oberstar (MN)
Ways and Means--Charlie Rangel (NY)


Throughout 2006, the biggest obstacle to high-skills-only bill to be floor on the full house or on the judiciary committee was the Republican controlled judiciary committee headed by Jim Sensenbrenner. He has won his own race ( Wisconsin ’s 5th) – no surprise there – he would not be heading the house Judiciary committee. Even if Republicans would have controlled the house, it would not have been Sensenbrenner; it was his last term as chair of judiciary committee. With Democrats winning, the difference is that it would not be Lamar Smith heading the house judiciary committee; it would be the Democrat John Conyers of Michigan . Whenever there was a non-CIR bill related to high-skills employment based immigration, like the one sponsored by John Shadegg (SKIL bill of the house) it was referred to House Judiciary committee. And Sensenbrenner basically put it on the shelf. That would change. How much? Only time will tell.

# Firstly, J.D. Hayworth of Arizona is on his way to losing his house seat. That’s house congressman called by Arizona Republic Newspaper as a “bully”, a strong anti-immigrant, who is gone from the House.
# Secondly, Jim Kolbe (pro-immigrant) retired from Arizona and a Democrat (Giffords) now occupies that seat. A strong anti-immigration candidate (Graf) lost election for that seat. That’s good news.
# Thirdly, Jon Kyl almost lost his Senate seat in Arizona. If it’s any indication that anti-immigration noises are no career-savers, this may be it.
# A quick study of the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus (read anti-immigration) which boasted 104 overwhelmingly republican members before the elections indicates that the list is now down to 92 members, a distinct minority so far.

It is a lie that the IRC candidates dropped from 104 to 92 after the election. There were a number (I think around 6) who had retired before the election or simply decided not to run again. Only around 7 actually lost their seats, and those who won mostly did so by good margins. The IRC is staying largely intact! I wonder if they will be able to recruit new members from among the conservative Democrats who just won?