Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
The Arizona Republic's Linda Valdez joins the discharge petition movement today. Roll Boehner for immigration reform:
It’s called the discharge petition.
Under House rules, you need a majority of the 435 members to bring a measure directly to the floor. With 200 Democrats currently in the chamber, only a few Republicans are needed.
* * *
President Obama says he’s “absolutely certain” the Senate’s comprehensive immigration reform bill would pass the House if it came to the floor. Arizona Democratic Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick told The Arizona Republic editorial board this week, “It would pass.”
So let’s roll Republican House Speaker John Boehner.
If Kirkpatrick and president are wrong, and the Senate bill fails, we can start over in two years.
This might not be a complete disaster.
For one thing, the GOP will get the blame, and — as GOP Sen. Marco Rubio suggested — Obama can extend deferred deportation to the parents of the Dreamers. This will help Democrats in 2014 and anoint Hillary Clinton in 2016.
For another thing, we could stop pretending the Senate bill is a great deal. It isn’t.
It’s a spending-bloated gift to the border-industrial complex.
The Department of Homeland Security has so little accountability now that Congress was oblivious while Janet Napolitano’s crew spent $600,000 per unit for Border Patrol housing in Ajo, Arizona, where houses sell for less than $100,000 each.
Slathering on tens of billions more won’t help DHS efficiency.
There are also huge human rights issues. The Justice Department recently said it will not bring charges in two separate cases where Border Patrol agents shot to death young men who were fleeing south over the border. Those cases were two years old. Still no word on a case from last year in which 16-year-old Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez was killed by numerous bullets fired by Border Patrol across the line into Nogales, Sonora, Mexico.
Doubling the size of the Border Patrol — as the Senate bill would do — is among the things that bill co-creator Arizona Sen. John McCain says would produce “the most militarized border since the fall of the Berlin Wall.” This is a goal?
OK, so this bill has problems. Nevertheless, business, religious, law enforcement, civil rights, immigrant and labor leaders are desperately fighting for comprehensive reform.
That’s because the GOP-controlled House remains opposed to comprehensive reform’s path to citizenship.
A recent resolution by the Republican National Committee made “no citizenship” the official position. The RNC’s best offer: permanent second-class, non-citizen status for Dreamers and the rest of the nation’s 11 million undocumented residents through renewable work permits.
Rep. Matt Salmon is one of Arizona GOP House members being lobbied by supporters of comprehensive reform. He told The Arizona Republic editorial board this week: “On the citizenship thing — I’m not there.” He likes the RNC’s idea, though he did point out that Dreamers are “not culpable” for being here illegally. This is a moderate approach among House Republicans.
The Senate bill offers a chance at earned citizenship. That’s a sizable fig leaf to cover the obscene spending. From the House, you’ll get naked spending.
So hold your nose. And plug your ears.
Of course, rolling Weeper of the House John Boehner with a discharge petition also means rolling the nativist anti-immigrant Tea-Publicans in the Arizona congressional delegation. Will the Republic endorse these Tea-Publicans again in 2014? You betcha.
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