Chris Crane, the National ICE Council President, today called on Senators to defeat the Corker-Hoeven amendment to S. 744 – the comprehensive amnesty bill. He said that Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) admitted needed interior enforcement provisions are absent, and that Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) abandoned his commitment to ICE officers and Sheriffs to repair the bill’s provisions that gut interior enforcement.
If you haven't read the Corker-Hoeven amendment to the Senate immigration bill, you aren't alone. Congress hasn't read it either. The Gang of Eight and the cosponsors of Corker-Hoeven spent the last couple of days boasting about the amendment, and making promises about what it would do, then Majority Leader Reid sent the Senate home with a 1,000-plus-page reading assignment for the weekend. The text of the amendment wasn't released until Friday afternoon. The Senate votes on Monday. Additional handwritten changes to the amendment have yet to be distributed to every Senator.
Ever since the Senate Judiciary Committee began its consideration of the Gang of Eight's amnesty bill nearly two weeks ago, one topic has been a recurring theme -- a biometric exit/entry system. After defeating a number of strong amendments to include biometrics in the Gang's bill, the Committee passed an amendment on Monday that was offered by Sen. Orrin Hatch. But Sen. Hatch's amendment actually weakens current law and does nothing to make S.744 any better.
Last week, the union that represents the nation's 7,600 Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents sent a letter to Congress warning it that the Gang of Eight's amensty bill, S.744, would endanger the public safety. Dozens of local law enforcement officers had signed on to the letter, and more have added their names since. This week, the union that represents the federal employees at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services also signed on to the letter.
Over the weekend, Gang of Eight Members, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), sent a letter to Senate Judiciary Chairman Pat Leahy (D-Vt.) urging him to have an open and transparent process when the Committee begins work on the Gang's soon-to-be-released legislation. On Tuesday, Sen. Leahy responded to Rubio with his own letter and stated that he plans to move "quickly and decisively" on the bill.
While Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said the White House's leaked immigration plan was an attempt to politicize the immigration debate and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said it would be "dead on arrival", the actual details of the two plans are essentially the same - they both grant instant amnesty to the nation's 11 million illegal aliens and neither bill does anything to stop future illegal immigration or protect America's unemployed.
Tuesday was a rough day for the new face of the pro-amnesty movement. During the first House Judiciary Committee immigration hearing of the new Congressional session, San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro made a passioned plea for giving amnesty to the nation's 11 million illegal aliens. But he had no answers to tough but reasonable questions from GOP Members who were open to debating a comprehensive immigration reform bill.
Speaking in Las Vegas today, President Barack Obama laid out an immigration reform plan that would make illegal aliens eligible for provisional legal status and green cards without the additional enforcement triggers proposed by the Gang of Eight Senators. The president said his Administration has already patched up “some of the worst cracks in the system,” so now is the time for “common-sense, comprehensive immigration reform.”
In an op-ed in The Washington Times Representative Elton Gallegly (R-Calif.), Chairman of the Subcommittee on Immigration Policy and Enforcement, writes that Congress needs to step up and pass mandatory E-Verify. Gallegly writes that by mandating E-Verify in passing the Legal Workforce Act, jobs would open up for millions of American workers while removing counterfeiting and fraud from the hiring process.
The Department of Homeland Security is finalizing its plan for a biometric data system to track when immigrants leave the United States and will present it to Congress within weeks, a DHS top official said today during a Congressional hearing. This comes weeks after DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano said the current biographical data works well and said there were no plans to implement an exit system.