POLITICO | After years of false starts, Washington finally appears to be on the path to rewriting the nation’s immigration laws.

The Senate Gang of Eight bill is holding its own in committee and is expected to hit the Senate floor in June. And in the House this week, members of a bipartisan group agreed “in principle” on a big bill to be revealed in June.

But in this case, looks are deceiving. There are still major hurdles before immigration reform can reach President Barack Obama’s desk. The biggest one is the GOP-controlled House.

Right now, the Senate bill has no chance of making it to the House floor. Key senators such as Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) have stressed that their bill would need upwards of 70 Senate votes in order to enact pressure on the House. But House GOP negotiators flatly say the margin of votes in the Senate — no matter how big — won’t matter.

“I don’t think it can pass the House,” said Rep. John Carter (R-Texas) said of the Senate bill, echoing the quiet conversation of top House Republican leaders. “I think our bill has a better chance of passing the House than the Senate bill. We went more into detail than they did. They’ve got holes all through their bill.”

WASHINGTON TIMES | The Homeland Security Department has granted legal status to 99.2 percent of all illegal immigrants who have applied under President Obama’s new non-deportation policy for young adults, according to the latest numbers released Friday.

That’s a slight drop from the 99.5 percent approval rate reported last month.

SEE RELATED: Securing border driving House’s immigration efforts
The policy, known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, grants legal status to most illegal immigrants under the age of 31 who came to the U.S. before age 16 — usually brought by their parents. They are allowed to remain in the U.S. without fear of deportation, and are given work permits. Most states have agreed to issue them driver’s licenses as well.

DACA is seen as a test-run should Congress pass a broad legalization for the 11 million illegal immigrants estimated to be in the U.S.

That’s one reason why the high approval rate is striking.

Critics of the Obama policy say a rate that high means the administration isn’t doing much screening of those who are applying.

THE HILL | There appears to be at least one remaining holdout within the bipartisan House immigration group that announced an “agreement in principle” on a far-reaching proposal Thursday: Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.).

The California liberal, who is the fourth-ranking Democrat in the House, has refused to say whether he has endorsed the verbal pact made Thursday evening by six of the eight members of the immigration group.
After Becerra would not say whether there was an agreement in the group as he left a two-hour meeting Thursday, another Democrat in the room, Rep. John Yarmuth (Ky.), said in an interview Friday that Becerra had declined to immediately sign on.
“He said, ‘I’m not ready to say there’s an agreement in principle,’” Yarmuth said of Becerra. “I think it just depends on what you’re understanding of what an agreement in principle is.”

BRENDA WALKER | Last Wednesday, May 15, the State Department held its annual meeting of refugee resettlement leaders and citizens to allow for input into the refugee program. The invaluable Refugee Resettlement Watch website encouraged patriots to attend or send written comments, as did VDARE.com.. Subsequently RRW’s Ann Corcoran reported: “You did it! Your testimony flooded State Department hearing yesterday.”

RRW has complied some of the citizen statements: Archive for the ‘Testimony for 5/15/2013 State Dept. meeting’ Category. Check it out!

The refugee issue gets little attention because the numbers are less dramatic than the million or so legal immigrants already coming in every year. But since extreme diversity is apparently a goal of the program, refugees tend to cause disproportionate trouble. For FY 2012, the US government admitted some 76,000 refugees. (But remember they will be starting their own migration chains under the family reunification provisions of current law).

Nevertheless, this tiny corner of Washington’s

POLITICO | Jeb Bush met with several tea party officials in Florida last month to talk immigration reform as the Gang of Eight bill was nearing completion.

The former governor, and his son, Jeb Bush, Jr., met with with representatives from TheTeaParty.Net, Tea Party Express, The Tea Party News Network, Revive America and others on April 11, POLITICO has learned. Members of former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain’s staff and Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus’s staff were also present.

“Obviously dad has been doing a lot on the immigration debate for years,” Jeb Bush, Jr. told POLITICO. “We’ve been on the issue for a while… We spoke about general conservative principles that we don’t want to forget about.”

Jeb Bush co-authored a recently released book, “Immigration Wars” with Clint Bolick in which they argue against a pathway to citizenship. But he then said in March that he could back a path to citizenship if it didn’t provide incentives for illegal immigration. “This is a very encouraging time, because if we can get immigration right, imagine, there’s possibilities of cats and dogs living with one another in other policy areas as well,” Bush said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

The April meeting was part of an effort to get the tea party engaged in the immigration debate.

TheTeaParty.Net is leading a coalition of groups on the issue. It supports immigration reform but has not endorsed the Gang of Eight bill. Instead, it has drafted a document called “Secure America Now,” which includes seven principles crucial for members of the tea party on immigration, including calls for “assimilation” programs and tougher border enforcement.

Niger Innis, the chief strategist of the group, said the discussion with Bush helped the group in drafting the document, which he has since shared with Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) and Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), among others.

“The purpose of the meeting was to bring the tea party movement into the discussion of immigration,” Innis said. “We knew the immigration issue was coming fast down the track and we knew we didn’t want to be in complete opposition.