How to get the House-passed immigration bills through the Senate
Despite the distraction of the media/Trump tweet wars, the House managed to pass a couple of meaningful immigration enforcement bills yesterday: Kate's Law (6 pages) and No Sanctuary for Criminals Act (15 pages). That's GREAT news! The troubling news is what becomes of this legislation in the Senate if McConnell and crew don't wise up...
RollCall: A pair of enforcement bills targeting “sanctuary” cities and undocumented immigrants with prior deportations easily passed the House on Thursday, but they face an uphill climb in the Senate.
The bills are the first major pieces of immigration legislation taken up by the Republican-led Congress since President Donald Trump took office. Unlike former President Barack Obama, who had threatened to veto such measures, Trump has said he would sign both bills.
But votes in the Senate as recently as last year have shown that measures dealing with immigration policy on a piecemeal basis, especially those viewed by Democrats as racially motivated and aimed at broadly painting immigrants as dangerous [upholding law and restoring order], are not likely to meet the Senate’s 60-vote threshold required to advance most legislation.
Sanctuary city defunding is budgetary and could pass under reconciliation, only requiring a simple majority. Kate's Law should be an easier sale towards an essential, moral imperative. Unfortunately, today's Democrats are the antithesis of morality, and Republicans still don't have a supermajority. So, the quickest way to push that through to the President's desk without allowing this to devolve into a Democratic circus sideshow, would be to once again consider abandoning that pesky filibuster. I know...Mitch McConnell shivers at the thought. But Democrats under Harry Reid never seemed to have a problem setting it aside. It's time for Mitch to oblige, pass these through the Senate, and put some teeth back into our federal immigration law that's been ignored for far too many years. Do it for Kate!
WT: The smiling visage of Kathryn Steinle, tragically murdered while standing beside her father on a San Francisco pier, is well-known. Known nationally as well is that the illegal alien who shot her was a criminal with a long rap sheet, who had traveled illegally to the United States on multiple occasions, and had been arrested and repatriated to Mexico only to return to America to resume his criminal activity, including on that tragic day when he stole an unguarded weapon from a Bureau of Land Management agent and shot Ms. Steinle. All the while, he was protected by San Francisco’s elected officials and law enforcement authorities who proudly proclaim their city a “sanctuary” for illegal aliens.
Related link: SF murder case behind Kate’s Law inching toward trial
