Conservatives are beginning to organize against new immigration proposals emerging in Congress, including a forthcoming one from a working group put together by Speaker John Boehner and a just-released plan from Senate Minority Whip John Cornyn, Breitbart News has learned.
“My fear is that one of these bills would be used as a vehicle for the Democrats’ amnesty and open borders policies,” Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL), one of the key anti-amnesty members of the House, told Breitbart News when reached by phone Wednesday afternoon. “For over a year now, various amnesty and open borders senators like Chuck Schumer of New York by way of example have pled for the House to pass some kind of immigration bill that the Senate could then use to substitute the Gang of Eight amnesty bill. I’m very much concerned that anything that comes out of the House would be hijacked and turned into something that betrays America’s sovereignty.”
Brooks said he “wouldn’t put it past” Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) or Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to try to use whatever Boehner’s working group, which is led by Rep. Kay Granger (R-TX), comes up with or Cornyn’s bill with Texas colleague Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar to pass a broader immigration package.
“If it revives any push toward any type of legalization or amnesty, I would say to the leadership: You need to start watching the national news and see how outraged the people are when they see busses coming to their cities and towns,” Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC) added in an interview with Breitbart News. “Wake up, leadership, and look to see what America feels about this issue. They’re mad as hell.”
Rep. John Culberson (R-TX) expressed similar opposition to the plans emerging, and told Breitbart News the House should use its constitutional powers to force President Obama to enforce the law. “The House must use the power of the purse to enforce the law by withholding DHS’s administrative funding until they enforce the law and secure the border,” Culberson said in an emailed statement. “The power of the purse is the only way to make the Obama Administration enforce the law.”
Rep. John Fleming (R-LA) said Obama’s executive orders are the cause of the problem, not the 2008 law, and as such Congress shouldn’t give him any more money. “President Obama created this problem with the message that arose from his executive order, and he’s continued to push the notion of amnesty with his irresponsible rhetoric,” Fleming said. “It’s now grown into a crisis, and he’s doing nothing to solve it, but sitting back and demanding that Congress give him more money. I say it’s time the president stop with the executive orders, start enforcing existing laws, and actually show some leadership in confronting this crisis.”
Granger said on Wednesday that her group is holding off introducing its plan so it can review “wish lists” by various members to potentially include them in its legislation. Asked what the proposal was, Granger said “I can’t tell you that.” Asked what topic it concerned, she said “I can’t tell you that either.”
Conservatives are now worried about what it is that might be.
“What I hope the House will do is let the Senate act first and then the House can respond by either accepting the Senate proposal or rejecting it, but not amending it, sending it back to the Senate where you can have a conference committee and all hell could break loose,” Brooks said.
Boehner’s and Granger’s plan is reported to include around $2 billion in supplemental appropriations as opposed to the $3.7 billion President Obama is asking Congress for. Jones says Obama’s shouldn’t get a penny.
“I today raised hell in an Armed Services Committee hearing about funds for Afghanistan–how in the world can we continue to spend money in Afghanistan when we can’t account for two-thirds of the money going there, and I feel the same way about these children,” Jones said. “I’m sorry for these children from these South American countries or Central America who are coming here but we have laws on the books that are not being enforced. I do not see any reason to give the president one dime, never mind $2 billion or $3.7 billion–whatever it is. I think the American people are tired of this when we’ve got the laws on the books, or whether he has to use a presidential executive order to send them back–whichever.”
Brooks agrees with Jones: No more money for Obama.
“Sen. Coburn had it right on–if there’s 60,000 illegal alien children, it costs roughly $300 per one-way plane ticket for a total cost of less than $20 million to fix the problem as opposed to Barack Obama demanding $3.7 billion to not fix the problem,” Brook said. “To put that into perspective, if there are as reported roughly 60,000 illegal alien children, with the kind of money that Barack Obama is demanding we could buy them each a Cadillac Escalade and let them drive home. That’s $63,000 per child is what Barack Obama wants to spend over the next few months–that’s crazy.”
Brooks said that if it costs $20 million to put all those kids on a plane home, the various government agencies responsible for this can find that easily in their already-existing budgets. “Since $20 million will solve the problem, that is pocket change to most of the involved federal government agencies,” Brooks said. “They could easily come up with that $20 million to fly these illegal alien children back home without any supplemental appropriations. They just have to handle it internally with money they already have and re-prioritize.”
Cornyn and Granger have said their proposals will focus on a 2008 anti-human trafficking law that many have attributed to being the source of the border crisis problem that has just under 60,000 illegal alien children inside America right now, not being deported. But key anti-amnesty groups like Numbers USA, the Center for Immigration Studies and the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) have all said that 2008 law is not the real problem. The real problem, they say, is President Barack Obama’s various executive orders pushing non-enforcement of immigration laws, including especially the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) executive amnesty for so-called DREAMer illegal aliens.
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), the ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee and a top immigration hawk, has argued that until the president guarantees there will be no more executive amnesty as the president says he wants to do, and there is a reversal of the current policies, there should be no new money appropriated to this issue.
“Certainly, DACA and the President’s other numerous unlawful policies must be terminated,” Sessions wrote in a letter his office hand-delivered to every member of Congress on Monday. “But as a first step, Congress must not acquiesce to spending more taxpayer dollars until the President unequivocally rescinds his threat of more illegal executive action.”
Brooks worries since leadership seems to be moving quickly–Granger is demanding a vote before the House breaks for August recess–there may be something sneaky going on.
“As a general rule of thumb, the faster the House moves and the less deliberative the House is, the greater the likelihood the American people are getting the short end of the stick–and that the House leadership does not want to give the American people the time to figure that out because if the American people do figure that out, then resistance and opposition could arise which could block the legislation,” Brooks said.
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