Good luck with this one, Republicans, now that you've handed the entire issue of immigration over to Ted Cruz, Michele Bachmann, and Steve King. In a
223-189 vote, the House Republicans passed their $694 million appropriations bill which is never going to be implemented. Included in that bill is
$35 million for Texas Gov. Rick Perry and any other governor who thinks the border needs protecting from children by the national guard.
But that's not all. In a separate vote, they passed the anti-DREAMERS bill, 216-192. This is a particularly special one, which would go much further than just rebuking the President on the Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. The bill would "prevent the Obama administration from giving work permits or protection from deportation to young unauthorized immigrants who would have qualified for the DREAM Act." And it would block the 580,000 young people who have DREAM status now from renewing. In other words,
In the dark of night Republicans are voting to deport DREAMers, take away the DACA program, and make every undocumented immigrant deportable
— @RepGutierrez
Deport them all, the new rallying cry of the GOP. That's a smart thing to do on the eve of midterm elections, when the bill will never become law and is thus essentially nothing more than a statement of Republican principles.
Before the votes, White House Press Secretary issued this statement, which reads in part:
Republicans in Washington have repeatedly called the situation at our border a crisis; yet, tonight they are considering partisan legislation that will not address the problem and is sure to be rejected by the Senate. As the President said today, the Administration will continue to manage the border as responsibly as possible and address our broken immigration system, but no Administrative action is a substitute for Congressional action. That’s why the President will urge Congress to fix our broken immigration system once and for all upon returning from their recess by doing what the Senate did over a year ago and pass serious, comprehensive immigration reform legislation with bipartisan support.
Now that Cruz and Bachmann and King are in charge, this House will never pass comprehensive immigration reform. And with these votes, Republicans might not win the White House for a generation.
7:12 PM PT: Just one short year ago:
Boehner in July 2013: "This is about basic fairness. These children were brought here by no accord of their own"
http://t.co/...
— @sahilkapur
Yeah, he's totally given up.