Nancy Pelosi and a Recent Change in Immigration’s Chances
by Ryan Campbell | December 16, 2013
There have been shifts in politics in these last few days as Congress prepares to go home: Speaker Boehner (R-OH) finally lost his temper with the Heritage Foundation for criticizing the new budget deal before it came out, Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) is pushing with Boehner for the budget and Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) argued for fewer deportations in the unaired portion of a recent interview. While nothing else can happen this year as Congress leaves for the holidays, immigration is being very well positioned for 2014.
In an interview over the weekend with Telemundo’s ‘Enfoque,” Nancy Pelosi explained how she believed the Obama Administration should exercise more discretion to limit the number of deportations:
“If your only violations is you overstayed or came in a certain way, that’s no reason to split a family. And we have seen the personal stories. And we presented them to the Administration. So I think I’m hopeful that the documentation that we are providing to counter what others may be saying about who’s being deported, that we will see action from the President.”
This statement comes out only a few weeks after Ju Hong, a DREAMer with DACA status, yelled out to President Obama about his own family’s separation when his father was deported almost two years ago: “Mr. Obama, my family has been separated for 19 months now! You have the power to stop deportation for all undocumented immigrants in this country.”
Although Obama denied that he could stop all deportations, he can certainly bring them down as no other President found it necessary to make so many. We make the legal argument that he could unilaterally greatly reduce deportations here.
Alongside Pelosi’s remarks, John Boehner’s should not be overlooked: it was Heritage Action that pushed the GOP towards the shutdown, and the GOP lost big when they dragged us all in with them. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) smoothed things over a bit on meet the press, saying that they were all on the same team and that he would prefer if conservative discussions stay “within the family,” that is, away from the public.
None of Ryan’s smooth talk, however, can undo the meme that was Boehner’s exasperated face, eyes bulging, voice invigorated with frustration. The usual Tea Party groups like the Heritage Foundation criticized the budget before it was released. At a press conference, Boehner said “The day before the government reopened, one of these groups stood up and said ‘well we never thought it would work,’… Are you kidding me?!” he screamed.
Although less climactic, Marco Rubio (R-FL) also criticized the deal. Paul Ryan had a bit more of a graceful rebuff, saying that Marco Rubio should “read the deal and then get back to me.”
Now Paul Ryan is responsible for selling the budget deal, and he is taking to the media with a message that the Heritage Foundation is just fine, but wrong on this issue. He’s making sure not to damage the bridge with Heritage too much, but at the same time pushing a budget that will take shutdowns off the table for two years.
The Heritage Foundation was also the one who put out the laughably inflated numbers on the costs of immigration reform, co-authored by a white supremacist named Jason Richwine: a messy public divorce with them is just the thing that Boehner and other leaders need as an excuse to put an immigrant-friendly reform on the table and isolate the same group of legislators aligned with Heritage in the House that dragged us into a shutdown.
Looking at the mess of unproductivity the government is in because the GOP has allowed itself to be lead around by “no government conservatives” like Heritage that want nothing to be done, it isn’t surprising Boehner finally snapped a bit. While Republicans will circle the wagons around the talking points in the off season and put out a strong front, beneath the surface the power of unreasonable interest groups like Heritage is crumbling. When they finally break, there is very little holding back immigration reform, especially with the budget out of the way in 2013.