There’s a big shift that’s taken place with immigration policy with the GOP at the helm in the House; namely John Boehner (R-Ohio) and extremist Steve King (R-Iowa), who will likely chair the House Subcommittee on Immigration.  It has been speculated, in the new Congress, that Lamar Smith (R-TX) the current Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee will be named chair of that committee.

House Republications have already said that they will focus on border security and immigration enforcement over any future immigration reform. King favors changes to birthright citizenship to keep US-born children of illegal immigrants from receiving citizenship and argues more states should pass immigration crackdowns like Arizona’s SB 1070.  He has also pushed for more border enforcement and an electrified fence along the border to keep illegal immigrants out and has stated, “We do that with livestock all the time”.  Boehner will set a good deal of the agenda, and is likely to follow some of the plans mentioned in the Pledge to America that was released in September.

This most certainly will be a challenging shift from how current Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), and how other leading Democrats handled immigration issues.  Particularly, we can expect proposals that increase penalties for immigration-related crimes and make the removal of immigrants with criminal convictions easier.  Add to this the fact that both Smith and King have supported proposals that authorize state and local law enforcement officers to enforce immigration laws; and lastly, it’s been said that we can expect increased scrutiny of DHS enforcement practices by Congress and increases in funding for both border and interior enforcement.

For more on this, we link to the AILA Advocacy article released today.

[IMMIGRANT’S LIST reports]  Last week, Congressman Lamar Smith from Texas, the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, wrote an Op-Ed in Politico that should make everyone working for immigration reform take notice. Rather than lay out a plan to address the unsustainable immigration system in this country, he uses the words “amnesty,” “illegal-immigrant lobby” and “open-borders crowd” (24 times by our count) to scare readers.

We’ve included the text of the article from Politico.com.  When you read it, do what I did — ask yourself: “Okay, what’s your plan? How do we fix our broken system?”

We concur with immigrant’s List, “Governing means being responsible. But too many elected officials think screaming “AMNESTY” over and over passes for honest debate. They’re loud and they’re going to use every scare tactic in the book to get re-elected. Don’t let them get away with it. With your help, Immigrants’ List will work to elect members of Congress in 2010 who actually want to tackle the problems we face, and who actually want to govern.”

…what do you think?   info@immigrationsolution.net