A Sudden Bi-Partisan Senate Love Fest Over Immigration Reform? Are you Listening House?

Last updated on February 8th, 2013 at 11:41 am

“At this moment, it looks like there’s a genuine desire to get this done soon. And that’s very encouraging.” These were the words of our freshly re-upped President before a Las Vegas High School audience with a Hispanic majority of students. He was basically talking about a so-called bi-partisan Senate gesture by 4 D’s and 4 R’s to establish a path to citizenship for the estimated 11 million undocumented U.S. immigrants.

In joining the immigration scrum on this fine site I must say that Republicans in Congress care about immigrants on three levels. The first is to exploit Hispanic and Latino farm, construction and landscape workers for off-the-books pauper’s wages with no benefits. The second sudden surge of interest in the Spanish-speaking population is to try to fatten up the embarrassing 29% vote the South of the Border citizenry laid on Mitt Romney. Even a measly 29% is a remarkable total considering neither Romney or the T’Publican Party has anything to offer Hispanics/Latinos.

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The third reason the Guns Over People Party will acknowledge even the existence of any immigrants is all about money. While it was laughingly referred to as comprehensive immigration reform, it was almost anything but. I refer to the House bill (H.R. 6429) passed November 30th last year that was a naked power and money grab disguised as deep concern about our nation’s immigration policy. It’s called the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) Jobs Act. If you’re a foreign student at a U.S. University and you have a Masters or PhD in one of the four STEM disciplines, we’ll hire 55,000 of you on an employee-sponsored Green Card.

For the cynical and aware among you, this represents an attack on jobs that should go to Americans. It will also create a ripple effect to send support jobs overseas. Will the foreign student get paid less than his/her American counterpart? As old ‘what’s her name’ used to say, “You betcha.”

In writing for the Economic Populist Online, Robert Oak has done a wonderful job in creating graphs that show that an earlier predecessor program, H-1B Visa numbers actually exceeded the increase in total employment in the STEM occupations.

He also pointed out, that the so-called Green Card recipient obtains a permanent resident VISA if said foreign worker stays with one employer for five years. This bill is the quintessence of the elitism Republicans have grown to represent in the House. Its purpose is to create a permanent lower-paid replacement class of brainiacs from another land in STEM occupations. Every “immigrant” initiative is a gift to the top 1 or 2%. Fox and Limbaugh and the pre-inked press will sell it to a gullible public for something diametrically opposed to what it really is, all the while viciously hacking away at Obama’s truly people-friendly and democratic immigration concepts and solutions embracing immigrants genuinely in need of help, not just as human fodder for the privileged 1-2% of greedy American money-grubbers and their patron corporations.

A really ugly sub-text of the legislation is that it negatively targets a Diversity Visa program that essentially benefits immigrants from Africa. It’s a toss up as to which minority Republicans hate more – black or Hispanic. But hate them they do and then wonder why they can’t pry their votes loose come election time. Arizona hates immigrants immediately to their south. So does Alabama. South Carolina goes without saying. Inland Republicans aren’t any better. Iowa Representative Steve King, the poster child for those who are disdainful of any person or race who isn’t a mirror image of white America, threatened to file a lawsuit to stop the President’s “Dream Act” Executive Order for a nearly a million undocumented young people.

It’s an order targeting young illegal immigrants who have lived in the U.S. for five years or more, who graduate from a U.S. High School and go on to the military for two years or a like period of time in a college. Their reward would be temporary residency for six years qualifying them for permanent residency if they graduate college or are honorably discharged from the military.

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer’s first response to the order was to deny benefits and driver’s licenses to those immigrant youth who qualified under the deferred action Order. The Order expires February 28th. Had Romney been elected he would have ripped the EO up the day after his inauguration. Obama is likely to keep it rolling.

Actually the Dream Act EO sounds a whole lot like the House STEM bill and H-1B visas that the Republicans purport to love. But I guess Mexicans don’t count with Republicans. And you thought racism in the U.S. was limited to African-Americans.

So, GOP Senators are pretending to work with Democratic colleagues they’ve ripped to shreds daily on some “reform path to citizenship “immigration bill with a date for passage picked for sometime this summer. ROTFLMAO! The only question is when will McConnell dive for the filibuster?

So who knows the final Senate outcome. In any case it’s irrelevant. If by some miracle Republican-controlled House follows suit, you can bet there will be enough distasteful amendments barnacled onto the legislation to fill an iron ore boat. But its highly doubtful that the House will have anything to do with the upper chamber’s best efforts. That’s because there are whispers that employer penalties might be in the mix. What a hoot. Congress would have to triple the size of enforcement agencies to keep up with employees who have been gaming the system for decades with knowing winks from both sides of the aisle.

In one of my earlier submissions I wrote of a South Carolina law that was highly punitive for so-called illegal immigrants and farcically benign on those who would hire them. Something like a slap on the wrist the first time they’re caught; a slap on the wrist the second time they’re caught; a slap on the wrist the third time they’re caught with a fine that amounted to small pocket change.

There is only one solution to the immigration question, the gun question and all other questions that require thought and reason and it ain’t emerging from the House, at least not until there’s a major reshuffle in the House membership in 2014. If the House remains Republican in roughly the same numbers it enjoys now, nothing happens. NOTHING!!!

Dennis S

Raised rural & small town, then lived in N.Y., Chicago & LA. Widely traveled. Returned from world wandering to pursue media life of anchorman/reporter and major, medium and small market talk radio. Highly active in politics. Once worked as orderly & security in Mens Lock Ward for the Criminally Insane at a state institution. Much more rational population than current Teapublicans. Great concern for country run by and for the extreme wealthy. The inhumane current running through this country has no precedent in modern history.

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