Immigration
May 24, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
I have written before about the lack of expression of opposition to the Schumer-Rubio amnesty legislation on leading Fox News programs such as Sean Hannity’s. While amnesty opponents receive little or no air time, Marco Rubio appears fairly regularly with Hannity to field mostly soft-ball questions. Now comes word that Rubio will appear tonight on a “special edition” of Hannity to field questions from an audience of experts on immigration.
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May 23, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
With so many scandals in the picture or looming, it’s easy to miss the fact that President Obama may soon become one of the most successful presidents in American history. I’m defining success as fulfilling Obama’s mission of substantially transforming America. The Obama administration scandals matter because, to one degree or another, they involve scandalous conduct. But step back for moment. In 20 years, very few people will remember any
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May 22, 2013 — John Hinderaker
One of my favorite adages goes like this: Any damn fool can learn from his own experience, what you want to do is learn from other people’s experience. Actually, you could say that the ability to learn from other people’s experiences is the only thing that makes human progress possible. The Europeans have had a lot of bad experiences. A few of them we have learned from; most, sadly, we
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May 21, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
John Yoo identifies the common thread in the major Obama administration scandals: Add up all the recent scandals and the message is clear: the Obama administration is showing that it cannot be trusted with the basic functions of government: law enforcement (surveillance of reporters), taxation (IRS scandals), and national security (Benghazi). How, then, can we trust the administration when it comes to immigration — an area in which it already
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May 21, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
While attention is focused on various Obama administration scandals, the Schumer-Rubio immigration reform legislation keeps chugging along in the Senate. What are the prospects for enacting this law, or some similar version? I believe the Senate is likely to pass Schumer-Rubio. All or nearly all of the Senate Democrats will vote for it. That’s 55 votes or close to it. The four Republican members of the Gang of Eight –
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May 20, 2013 — John Hinderaker
A group of conservatives that includes Paul and me have signed a letter opposing the Gang of Eight’s immigration bill. I didn’t contribute to drafting the letter, but I was proud to sign it because it sets out the key arguments against the proposal in a powerful and easily understandable way. The group is called the Coalition Against S. 744, and the letter is titled “The Wrong Way to Reform
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May 16, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
A reader provided me with several useful comments on my post regarding the Republican share of the Hispanic vote in presidential elections since 1980. First, he says that the figure I used for George W. Bush’s share in 2004 — 43 percent — is an outlier: In 2004, NEP (National Exit Poll) reported 44% for Bush, the highest of all ten polls. That result was widely and immediately challenged. Pew
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May 16, 2013 — John Hinderaker
Let’s put aside the Obama administration’s scandals for a moment, and return to an issue that will have a great deal more to do with America’s future: immigration. The proposed Gang of Eight bill will result in somewhere between 30 million and 57 million new immigrants over the next ten years. This is, in a nutshell, why the bill is so bad. The impact of such a mass influx of
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May 15, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Last week, Bret Baier’s Special Report program on Fox News featured interviews with Marco Rubio and Jeff Sessions about the Rubio-Schumer amnesty legislation. The interviews were given separately. Although Baier tried his best to make it into a point-counterpoint kind of affair, it couldn’t really be a debate because Rubio and Sessions didn’t appear together. I understand that Baier, naturally enough, would have preferred to have Sessions and Rubio on
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May 15, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Key elements of the Republican establishment insist that Republicans must support amnesty and a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants in order to make major inroads with Hispanic voters. But an analysis of the Hispanic vote in the last nine presidential elections does not support this claim. It shows, instead, that other considerations help explain how Hispanics vote. Here is the Republican share of the Hispanic vote in those elections:
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May 14, 2013 — Scott Johnson
A political reporter whom I greatly respect, and who asks not to have the comment attributed to him, writes to comment on one possible side effect of the IRS scandal: “Not to be paranoid, but the IRS scandal may make it easier for the immigration-bill advocates to push their amazing bill through Congress while the public’s mind is elsewhere, if only because it gives the media another excuse not to
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May 13, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
President Obama tried today to catch up with the IRS scandal, condemning the IRS officials who targeted conservatives. Obama clearly perceives the threat this scandal poses to trust in government, and hence to his project of vast expansion of governmental power. It’s possible too that he feels genuine outrage about the IRS’s targeting of conservatives. But neither presidential outrage nor condemnation can mitigate the central concern that this scandal reinforces
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May 9, 2013 — John Hinderaker
As I wrote here, I am not a fan of trying to “fix” the Senate Gang of Eight’s immigration bill through amendments. I think it is fundamentally flawed in multiple ways and cannot be fixed, least of all by adding more provisions relating to border enforcement. But the Senate Judiciary Committee is marking up the immigration bill, and Republicans have offered a wide variety of amendments. To the extent this
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May 6, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
The Heritage Foundation has released its long awaited study of the cost to American taxpayers of legalizing the current population of illegal immigrants. The study, available here, estimates the cost at $6.3 trillion, at a minimum. Andrew Stiles at NRO does a good job of summarizing the study’s methodology and findings: The study seeks to calculate the total amount of taxpayer-funded benefits and services illegal immigrants would, if given legal
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May 6, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Mark Krikorian shows how the Schumer-Rubio immigration reform bill falls short of what Sen. Rubio promised when he touted it in advance on conservative Talk Radio. Here are some of the particulars Krikorian presents: 1. Rubio emphasized that to gain legal status, immigrants would have to pay their back taxes. But the bill Rubio helped write requires only that applicants “satisfy any applicable federal tax liability” that has previously been
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May 6, 2013 — John Hinderaker
I have gone back and forth with Senator Rubio’s office as to whether the Gang of Eight’s bill is fatally flawed because of the vast discretion it gives federal bureaucrats, including the Department of Homeland Security, in implementing the act. On the subject of DHS discretion, Rubio’s office said to us: I’d disagree with your description of the discretion given to the Administration as “vast discretion”, but the waivers &
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May 5, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Mickey Kaus comments on the statement we received on Friday from Senator Rubio’s office (posted here) in defense of the Gang of Eight immigration bill: Rubio: Illegals will pay fines or be deported! Ambassador of Amnesty Marco Rubio argues on Powerline–or rather, “Marco Rubio” argues, since the words are attributed only to his “office”**–that critics overstate the number of new immigrants who would be added by his legalization bill: There
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