The immigration reform process going on in Washington presents us with a perfect example of why congress is the biggest joke in the country. From Steve Benen at Maddowblog. (emphasis mine)
Rep. Peter Roskam (R-Ill.) told Dave Weigel yesterday one of the main reasons and he and his House Republican colleagues will not support comprehensive immigration reform.
“If you’re the White House right now,” he theorized, “and you have a signature law — that is, Obamacare — that is completely a legacy issue for the president, and it’s looking like implementation is going to be a disaster, and if you’re on your heels in terms of these scandals, and you’re flummoxed by the NSA, there’s one issue out there that’s good for the White House. That’s immigration. The question is: How much energy does the White House actually put into getting the legislation, or do they want to keep the issue for 2014?“
I hear this quite a bit from the right. Democrats say they want to pass reform legislation, the argument goes, but it’s a sham. What those rascally Democrats really want, conservatives argue, is for immigration reform to fail so Democrats can use the issue against the GOP in the 2014 midterms and beyond.
And every time I hear this, I’m convinced our public discourse has slipped a little deeper into madness.
Look, this isn’t complicated: Democrats want to pass immigration reform. President Obama wants to pass immigration reform. When the reform bill reached the Senate floor yesterday, it received 100% support from Democratic senators, and support is expected to be at a similar level among House Dems. If the party were engaged in some elaborate ruse, they’ve apparently managed to fool everyone, including themselves.
In fact, I’d love to hear Roskam and others who share his ideology explain the electoral rationale behind their strategy. He seems to be arguing, “Democrats want immigration reform to fail so they can use it against us, therefore, we should make sure reform fails so that they can use it against us. That’ll show ’em!”
I think there is also something missing from the above snippet, the fact that Republicans never want to give President Obama a win. They see any legislation that gets passed as a win for the president. Maybe they aren’t aware that he has already been reelected and “giving him a win” isn’t going to help him electorally. It might help his legacy, but is trashing President Obama’s legacy worth more to them than representing their constituents? It could be the reason why they are less popular than child molesters.
Extreme Liberal's Blog 
The lies, the lies, the lies, nothing but lies. It’s not President Obama who has made everything in D.C. about the republicans. It’s the republicans who are refusing to do their jobs and claiming that it’s the president’s fault. They don’t seem to realize that not every American is unaware of what they’re doing, and some of them are republicans.
I’m new here, so if I ask a stupid question please forgive me. Why is immigration reform so important? The Democrats want to make millions of Mexicans, and others legal. This will cost millions of jobs lost to Americans who have been here for generations. Two thirds of whom will never become citizens. Seventy-five or better the ones who do become citizens will probably vote democratic, but most will not support gay marriage, or abortion issues.
Not every American see’s the lies from both sides, but a great many of us do!
Sounds like you’ve been listening too much to Rush and Faux News. Only those Mexicans and other who WANT to become Americans will follow an immigration plan which is being designed to take many years with some considerable expense. Compare this to what my German great grandfather had to undergo, only needing to pass a simple health exam at Ellis Island in order to “get in like Flynn”. That was in the 19th century when most immigrants were white from Northern Europe. The proposed immigration plan out of the Senate is no breeze compared to the wet foot-dry foot Cuban policy like that enjoyed by the parents of Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz. As a retired contractor who has employed hundreds (mostly Mexicans) over the decades, I couldn’t have built much without their hard work. Can’t get many white men to climb over a hot roof to shingle it, or wrap up in clothes from head to toe to paint in our Texas climate where we hit 90 every day from May until October. I’ve tried to hire white workers and had to fire too many of them for sloppiness and laziness. Many Americans, especially from our younger generation, are afraid of hard physical labor. Yes, 70% of Mexican-Americans in Texas are Roman Catholic, (the rest are Pentecostal, Mormons, Witnesses) and therefore socially conservative, but they vote first of all for economic security, They used to vote more for Republicans until they began to realize how racist most in the GOP have become.
I don’t have a television! That and I’m not into infotainment of any flavor, be it Faux, CNN, MSNBC or what have you.
Only 1/3 of the Mexicans granted immunity when Reagan was President became citizens. If somebody makes a comment some people don’t like, they challenge the imagined source, rather than answer the question. Both the United Nations, and the Central Bank of Mexico have stated that Mexicans working in North America has not raised the standard of living in Mexico.
This is not the 1800’s we are not expanding our economy. Our economy is getting smaller. We are not building factories, we are shipping factories to Mexico, China, and Indonesia.
I’ve worked as a roofer, carpenter, on a Mississippi river towboat, and personally enjoy hard labor, but many people due to a liberal policy of social welfare do not see the need to work so hard. If Mexico had as liberal a social safety net as the U.S. you’d find many of them wouldn’t work nearly as hard as they do. In fact there is little difference between 2nd, and 3rd generation Mexicans and Americans in their willingness to work. A hungry baby, and a nagging wife will do wonders for a mans willingness to work.
I myself was a supervisor for a small business who hire some “undocumented” Mexicans. They did not get food stamps or any other government support. They were paid cash. If they did not work, they didn’t get paid. They were very motivated.
Where are the links to back up your FACTS, Robert? The 1986 immigration law signed by Reagan granted amnesty to nearly 3 million illegal immigrants, Sen. Alan Simpson (R-WY) said the amnesty provision actually saved the act from being a total loss. “It’s not perfect, but 2.9 million people came forward. If you can bring one person out of an exploited relationship, that’s good enough for me.” That’s a lot more people than your FACT of 1/3, Robert.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128303672
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) reports that Mexico has made tremendous progress over the last decade in terms of improving the quality of life of its citizens, especially in the areas of education, health and jobs.
http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/countries/mexico/
Mexico does have many social welfare programs including universal health coverage for all of its citizens.
http://roygermano.com/2011/11/19/social-welfare-programs-and-subsidies-in-mexico/
Mexico has the one of the highest Gross National Income rankings(in US dollars) in Latin America second only to Brazil and higher than Australia.
Click to access GNI.pdf
I lived, taught high school for 15 years in predominantly Hispanic South Texas where most Mexican-AMERICANS are third, fourth, fifth generation, many of their ancestors coming here a century ago during the Pancho Villa Revolution. The undocumented Hispanics tend to move farther away from the border to better able hide in the big cities of the North. Some Latinos in South Texas even trace their land back to Spanish grants. They are NOT lazy people per your assessment. I’ve traveled extensively in Mexico, five trips in the past 2 years alone to Cancun, Acapulco, Puerto Vallarta, and Mexico City. The capital city has many affluent areas, upscale malls with American stores like Saks. The Mexican middle class fill the many Walmarts there. Mexicans also INVEST in the United States opening discount department stores like Fallas Parades and the furniture/appliance chain Grupo Famsa USA. Among cities with a 2007 population of more than 500,000 people, Hispanic-owned businesses comprised 59.8 percent of all businesses in El Paso, the highest in the nation, followed by San Antonio, Texas (39.4 percent), Houston (23.3 percent), Albuquerque, N.M. (23.1 percent) and Los Angeles (21.0 percent). http://www.bizjournals.com/houston/print-edition/2012/01/20/like-the-equivalent-of-halliburton.html?page=all
Mexicans are not just TAKERS as the right-wing racists would want you to believe. .
One could ask “what has Congress done right lately”? if the answer is very little, then the best thing for Congress to do is very little.
I did not say anybody was lazy. Fact is 2nd and 3rd generation Mexican-Americans are little different from other Americans in accepting / using social welfare programs. Which are much more generous in the U.S. than they are in Mexico. People do what they need to survive!, in the U.S. people on welfare have a higher standard of living than most people anywhere south of the American border or most other parts of the world. In America the greatest single cause of poverty is single parent households.
Who said they were just takers? You expect to hear something, so that’s what you hear, and don’t hear anything you don’t want to hear. They do come here for jobs, and people who citizens who were born here take easy social welfare payments, Why work hard when you can make ends meet without working?