Reid Tries To Rush Amnesty Ahead of Falling Support
“With a new poll showing falling support for the Gang of Eight comprehensive immigration reform bill, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has announced an accelerated schedule in which the Senate would take a final, up-or-down vote on passing the bill by the end of next week,” the Washington Examiner reports.
“‘I’m just telling everybody that we’re going to either file cloture on this on Friday or Saturday or Sunday or Monday,’ Reid said as the Senate opened its morning session. Filing for cloture means that a final vote would be held three days later. So if Reid filed for cloture on Monday, June 24, a final vote on the bill would be held on Thursday, June 27. The Senate’s July Fourth break starts the week after.
Obamacare Impact Favors Hiring Immigrants Before Citizens
“As I’ve outlined previously, under Obamacare, businesses with over 50 workers that employ American citizens without offering them qualifying health insurance could be subject to fines of up to $3,000 per worker. But because newly legalized immigrants wouldn’t be eligible for subsidies on the Obamacare exchanges until after they become citizens – at least 13 years under the Senate bill – businesses could avoid such fines by hiring the new immigrants instead,” says Philip Klein at the Washington Examiner.
Let’s be clear about something. In a free market, if a new immigrant worker can do a job better than an American worker for a cheaper price, there shouldn’t be a problem with a business hiring the immigrant. But when the immigration bill interacts with Obamacare’s employer mandate, it functions as a reverse tariff against hiring American citizens. It would be like subjecting Americans to a $3,000 tax on purchasing American cars, while allowing them to avoid that tax by purchasing cars from Germany, Japan, or any other country other than America. That’s not free trade. That’s government rigging the game against American citizens.
Sens. Hoeven, Corker Try to Push Different Border Amendment
“A border-security amendment being authored by Sens. John Hoeven, R-N.D., and Bob Corker, R-Tenn., for the immigration-reform bill would leave in place the hard trigger for the pathway to citizenship envisioned by Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, but it would seek to establish more objective metrics to define what it means for the border to be under operational control, Hoeven told National Journal Daily Monday evening,” National Journal reports.
“Hoeven and Corker had been working on an amendment to the immigration bill with Republican members of the Gang of Eight after an amendment released last week by Cornyn—which called for total “situational awareness” of the border and a 90 percent apprehension rate of border-crossers before registered provisional immigrants could begin applying for green cards—was widely panned by Democrats as a poison pill.”
Sen. Schumer Says What Does it Matter How Many People Come to the U.S.
“There was a striking moment in the Senate Judiciary Committee’s debate on the Gang of Eight comprehensive immigration reform bill when Republican Jeff Sessions and Democrat Charles Schumer argued over the number of immigrants who would be allowed into the country under the new legislation,” notes Byron York at the Examiner.
“Sessions cited reports suggesting the figure would be more than 20 million over the next decade in addition to the 11 million or so who are already in the United States illegally. Schumer took issue with that, although he wouldn’t name a figure of his own.
Then Schumer declared the whole dispute beside the point. ‘It is not that, ‘Oh, this bill is allowing many more people to come into this country than would have come,’ ‘ he said. ‘They are coming. They’re either coming under law or not under law.'”
Obama Secretly Runs Amnesty Bill Effort
“The White House is playing a larger role in developing the Gang of Eight’s immigration bill than its supporters publicly admit, according to a forthcoming article in The New Yorker. ‘No decisions are being made without talking to us about it,’ the official said of the Gang of Eight negotiations … ‘This does not fly if we’re not O.K. with it,’ a senior Obama official told author Ryan Lizza for the pending article. White House officials also believe the emerging bill will be a huge success for President Barack Obama,” the Daily Caller reports.
“‘If a Gang of Eight-style bill is signed into law by the President, it will probably be one of the top five legislative accomplishments in the last twenty years,’ the official said. ‘It’s a huge piece of business.'”