By Andrew P. Napolitano
The president's men trash the Constitution to pursue antagonists
The Senate immigration bill's authors acknowledged Tuesday that their legislation does not require illegal immigrants to pay all back taxes, saying it would be too difficult to make them ante up everything they might owe.
The Senate "Gang of Eight" immigration bill, S. 744, now wending its way through the Judiciary Committee, has been sold as a "pathway to citizenship" for the estimated 11 million illegal aliens. It does a lot more damage than that, and the public needs to understand what's in it.
Trying to take a positive step in the face of two controversies over untoward government intrusion, the White House has called on Sen. Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, to reintroduce a bill that would give more protections to the press when it comes to keeping their sources confidential, a White House spokesman said Wednesday.
Senators fended off changes to the immigration bill in committee on Tuesday, but the first cracks emerged in the carefully crafted compromise between business groups and labor unions, leaving even some supporters frustrated at the defensive votes they had to cast.
The Senate immigration bill survived its first tests Thursday as a core group of Republicans and Democrats held together, killing efforts to require full border security requirements before legalizing illegal immigrants.
Border security is a key sticking point in this year's immigration debate, but only a little more than one-third of senators have been to the southwestern border during their time in office to get a firsthand look at the security situation, according to a survey of the chamber's members by The Washington Times.
The latest version of the Senate immigration bill still repeals E-Verify but keeps it operational in the meantime so businesses in states that require its use can keep using it over the next five years.
With the Boston Marathon bombing suspects no longer threats to the American public, there is another, more politically contentious concern: Should the Obama administration designate 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev an "enemy combatant" bent on waging war against the U.S.?
The authors of the Senate immigration bill are mounting a campaign to try to make sure the Boston Marathon bombings last week don't derail their push to overhaul the U.S. immigration system, saying the problems lie more with the FBI than with legal immigration.
The uncle of the two suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing said Friday that they were born in Kyrgyzstan and came to the U.S. in 2003 on claims of asylum — news that's already beginning to reverberate in the immigration debate just beginning on Capitol Hill.
Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez said Thursday that President Obama squandered his chance to take the lead on immigration, and said the best role the president can play now is to cheer along the progress in Congress and try to rally support outside the Capitol.
What happens in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas. Too bad you can't say the same for California.
After months of negotiations, the Gang of Eight senators were poised to file their immigration bill late Tuesday evening, striking a deal to immediately legalize most illegal immigrants and ease the path for future legal immigrants in exchange for promises of much stiffer border security, backed up by verifiable yardsticks.
Emerging from a meeting Tuesday with key negotiators of a Senate immigration bill, President Obama gave the legislation his stamp of approval.
With chances iffy for winning a broad expansion of background checks in the Senate this week, gun control advocates face a tough choice: Hold out for a wide-ranging bill and risk killing it altogether, or find the stomach for a watered-down approach that ensures at least something passes.
Sen. Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat and the bill's chief sponsor, said illegal immigrants by definition are living in the shadows, and making them reconstruct their pay history could be tough and could keep many from legalization.
Immigration reform bill clears committee hurdles, heads to full Senate →
"We all realize that people did wrong things. And the goal is to set this right by letting those in the shadows come out," Mr. Schumer said as the committee plowed through amendments to the 867-page bill. "The worry I have here is that by being as rigid ... as this amendment is, that it will delay and prevent many, many people from coming out of the shadows."
Immigration reform bill clears committee hurdles, heads to full Senate →
