Round 2 in the Senate starts this week

The Senate is set this week to again take up the immigration reform bill it shelved several weeks ago amid signs that that version would not pass. Sunday news talk shows featured several prominent supporters and critics of the bill. This includes one who is so dead-set against some legislation that could be seen as a step toward resolving a grey-society of people who live within our borders but who reside "underground," that he vows to continue to "slow (the) process down and...hold up the bill." This statement was actually uttered by Jeffrey Sessions, a Republican Senator from Alabama. Nice to know he keeps an open mind on legislation before it even starts getting debated again.


Of course, in reviewing this statement, perhaps it should not be surprising that Sen. Sessions holds staunch-conservative views. He once was sidetracked from receiving a federal judgeship due to accusations of "gross insensitivity" on racial issues. Okay....so what did he do? He apparently led an unsuccessful prosecution against 3 civil rights workers for voter fraud in an election in 1984 over 14 allegedly tampered with ballots....out of 1.7 million. Not quite the same wide-sweeping impact as the hanging chad but worth the fight, I guess, to Sen. Sessions.


Seems he also like to cling to McCarthy-isms: he has called the NAACP and the ACLU, groups that espouse the rights of the down-trodden or minority, as "un-American" and "Communist-inspired." He has also said that the Ku Klux Klan was "OK" - kinda like saying that Hitler had a few good ideas.


One of his primary concerns (surprise-surprise) about the reform bill is that it does not do enough to "secure" our borders. In fact, he cites a congressional report that illegal immigration will be abated by 13% over the next 20 years as further justification to kill the current bill. Putting our national need for pragmatic decision-making and democratic debate from our Legislative Branch aside, resolute ties to ideology kill free-thinking. Shameful that this still occurs in America.

Sen. Sessions serves on the judiciary committee administering debate on the current reform bill.

Just like El Terminator: CIR is not dead yet!

On June 15th, the bipartisan group of Senate “grand bargainers” announced they had reached a procedural agreement to revive the comprehensive immigration reform bill and return it to the Senate Floor for a final round of debate. It is expected to be brought back to the Floor the last week of June with the hope to put the legislation to a vote on final passage before the Independence Day recess, which begins on July 1. Quite a turnaround!

The "deal" purportedly hinges upon agreement on a list of amendments to be considered before the vote on final passage of the bill and reports are that each party will be limited to 10-12 amendments. This is a but a small fraction of the hundreds of amendments that had been proposed.

If one of the eventual requirements is proving sufficient English language capability, esteemed Linguistics Professor Arnold Schwarzenegger says that foreign nationals should not watch Spanish TV. He, of course, said this in German.

No time to relax, folks, time's a-wasting

Unfortunately, news reports from last week as reported below are true: the Senate has tabled its reform legislation.

Here is a synopsis of what is happening -- both chambers of Congress are taking a break from immigration this week as the Senate considers energy legislation and the House tackles appropriations bills. In the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) temporarily set aside the Secure Borders, Economy Opportunity, and Immigration Reform Act (Kennedy-Specter substitute to S. 1348) on Thursday, June 7, after the bill’s supporters failed to garner enough votes to end debate and proceed toward a vote on final passage. Despite this setback, the bill’s “grand bargainers” continue to work behind the scenes to craft a procedural agreement that could pave the way for a final round of debate and votes on CIR - the President was supposed to also be chiming in this week after returning from the G-8 Summit. If the "bargainers" succeed in striking a bipartisan deal, Senator Reid could bring the bill back to the floor after the Senate dispenses with energy legislation, sometime before the July 4 recess.

In the House, Representative Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), Chair of the Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law, concluded last week a series of immigration hearings that spanned six weeks and touched upon nearly every important facet of immigration reform. Unlike the Senate, the House intends to move its own CIR legislation forward through the full committee process, beginning with a markup in the Immigration Subcommittee. However, House leaders have indicated that they intend to wait upon the deadlocked Senate and will postpone subcommittee markup hearings until the fate of S. 1348 is decided.

Stay tuned...

No cloture, er, closure, on the reform issue

According to news reports from late yesterday, the Senate has rejected attempts by some leaders to bring the immigration reforem bill from being voted on. This means that, in essence, the issue remains completely wide open, undecided, and potentially ready to suffer a slow death. This would surely make many conservatives minimally satisfied - but now they do not get all the new immigration enforcement measures the CIR bill was carrying.

This now requires the Bush administration to get on its horse and sway its conservative base, or at least enough of them, to bring the Senate bill to a vote.