n******1
发帖数: 3756 | 1 原标题:The Senate's anti-immigration warrior
The Homeland Security crisis might be over, but Sen. Jeff Sessions is just
getting started.
The rosy-cheeked, conservative Alabaman with a distinct Southern drawl
became Capitol Hill’s agitator-in-chief during the impasse over President
Barack Obama’s immigration actions and the Department of Homeland Security.
Mocked by the left, beloved by the hard-right and at times bothersome to
fellow Republicans, Sessions rallied his party in the weeks-long standoff
that ended with GOP capitulation.
Story Continued Below
But the fourth-term senator is quickly moving on from defeat to his next
crusade: attacking high-skilled immigration.
Using his new gavel on the Senate immigration panel, Sessions said he plans
to hold oversight hearings on H-1B visas that benefit high-skilled
immigrants — one of the tech industry’s top priorities in Washington.
Sessions has been in touch with tech employees who say they’ve been laid
off in favor of foreign workers. And his office recently conducted a staff
briefing for Senate aides, outlining what they say are abuses to the H-1B
system.
“We’ve got to ask — which hasn’t been asked — what does all this do to
the ability of a college graduate who’s living at home with his parents
because he can’t find a job?” Sessions said in a recent interview
outlining his plans. “One thing that’s accepted almost without debate is
that we need more of those workers, and that’s not accurate. And we’re
going to prove that’s not accurate.”
Sessions has long been a critic not just of legalizing undocumented
immigrants but also of allowing more immigrants into the United States at
all — a view to which many in the GOP take exception. And though
Republicans largely agreed early on to use DHS funding as leverage over
Obama on immigration, GOP support for that position waned as the impasse
continued, and Sessions ultimately relented, too.
The former federal prosecutor and Alabama attorney general has gravitated to
immigration issues since he arrived in Congress in 1997. But his interest
grew into an obsession in 2006 and 2007, when Sessions helped scuttle
comprehensive reform in the Senate during President George W. Bush’s tenure.
Since then, he’s been working to stop immigration ideas from the left and
right. When the Senate took up a sweeping immigration overhaul from the Gang
of Eight in 2013, Sessions methodically went about trying to kill the bill
with amendments viewed as poison pills and by driving up public opposition
with a drumbeat of floor speeches and statements. The legislation passed the
Senate but went nowhere in the House, where Sessions worked to gin up
opposition among Republican hard-liners.
More recently, he strategized with House conservatives to devise a response
to last summer’s border crisis, when unaccompanied migrant children from
Central America were being apprehended at the southern border in record
numbers. And this year, he lobbied against a border-security bill written by
House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mike McCaul (R-Texas). That
legislation was pulled from the House floor and has not been back since.
“I am in a minority in the U.S. Senate … in questioning whether we should
reward people who came into the country illegally with jobs that Americans
would like to do,” Sessions said. “But with the American people, I am in a
distinct majority.”
Now Sessions is moving to line up opposition against H-1B visas in case
Senate Republicans move forward on legislation. Building a more robust high-
tech workforce through immigration has been a rare area of agreement between
the two parties, even as the H-1B issue itself has stalled over the years.
Earlier this year, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) introduced the so-called
Immigration Innovation — or “I-Squared” — which would boost the number
of H-1B visas issued each year to as high as 195,000. Currently, the H-1B
cap is set at 65,000 annually, though an extra 20,000 visas are set aside
for immigrants with a master’s degree or higher from a U.S. school. The
measure is backed by a handful of Senate Democrats and key Republicans,
including Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida, John McCain of Arizona and Jeff
Flake of Arizona.
But it’s unclear how far that legislation will go. Senate Judiciary
Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said Wednesday he has no plans “
at this point” to take up Hatch’s bill.
“I want to get his advice first,” Grassley said of Sessions before moving
forward with the measure.
Sessions is now in a position to wield more influence on immigration policy
as the newly installed chairman of the Senate panel that oversees the issue.
The gavel of the subcommittee was seen as a consolation prize of sorts,
after he bowed out of the race to lead the Senate Budget Committee.
In his long fight against immigration, Sessions has rallied support from
leading conservative voices such as Rich Lowry of National Review and talk
show host Laura Ingraham, who regularly praises Sessions for his immigration
stance and has even said he should run for president in 2016.
“Overall, Sen. Jeff Sessions has probably done the best work on behalf of
the American people in the fight to protect American jobs from illegal
aliens of every person in Washington, D.C.,” Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) said.
“There has not been a close second.”
His popularity in Alabama is unparalleled, the state’s lawmakers say, and
notably, Sessions was the only Republican senator up for reelection last
year who did not have a primary or a general election challenger.
But his public life has some dark patches. In 1986, he was chosen by
President Ronald Reagan to be a federal judge, but his nomination was
rejected in the Senate amid allegations that he was racially insensitive as
a U.S. attorney — accusations that Sessions dismissed at the time.
And immigration reform advocates have long cast him as anti-immigrant.
“The people he talks to represent a sliver of the American people, a
portion of the Republican base and not the changing America that is
transforming the electorate,” said Frank Sharry, executive director of
America’s Voice, who has battled Sessions for years. “You go, Jeff. Hasten
the demise of your party so we can pass immigration reform.”
Sessions’ willingness to fight fellow Republicans was clear during the DHS
battle, particularly when he stood up in a private party lunch and
castigated a plan from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to split off
must-pass DHS funding from provisions blocking Obama’s actions on
immigration. Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) countered that the leader’s
strategy was the only way out that wouldn’t hamper local law enforcement
agencies that rely on DHS grants.
In the POLITICO interview, Sessions said the confrontation during the closed
-door meeting was “absolutely” worth it.
“I told my colleagues the truth as I saw it. I think everybody knew I was
telling the truth,” he added. “The leadership had made a decision how they
wanted to handle it, and people tend to follow the leader. And so I don’t
regret [it], and I don’t think anybody should have hard feelings about what
I said then.”
When asked whether Sessions and his crusade made it difficult for
Republicans in the DHS battle, Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn of Texas
replied: “Not really.”
“He cares a lot about the Constitution and the rule of law, and I think he
is understandably outraged at what the president has done,” Cornyn said of
Sessions recently. “So he’s been perhaps the most vocal member of our
conference, although I think a number of us have tried to do our fair share.”
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/03/jeff-sessions-dhs-immigration-115777.html#ixzz3TXQHYwzN | F********r
发帖数: 1748 | 2 塞老格老联手，H1b要遭殃。
I sqaure法案大家还是当没有这回事吧。 | s*******n
发帖数: 4402 | 3 It won't go anywhere in the media. But it can gain some political traction
in the Congress and prevent the Congress from passing any pro-immigration
bill.
【在 F********r 的大作中提到】
: 塞老格老联手，H1b要遭殃。
: I sqaure法案大家还是当没有这回事吧。
| f*****a
发帖数: 1026 | 4 This guy is really protecting the american people! | p*******y
发帖数: 173 | 5 很想知道阿拉巴马州的同学请他催绿会是什么样的结果。 | b*****e
发帖数: 53215 | 6 巴马那地方h1也没几个
【在 p*******y 的大作中提到】
: 很想知道阿拉巴马州的同学请他催绿会是什么样的结果。
| s*******n
发帖数: 4402 | 7 I appreciate your outright anti-immigration sentiment. At least that saves
us the time from scolding and slandering each other.
【在 f*****a 的大作中提到】
: This guy is really protecting the american people!
| l*****g
发帖数: 525 | 8 这位永久居民/公民，请不要来找K，出门右转有菌斑，或者成立一个新版讨论如何保护
美国劳工，谢谢……
【在 f*****a 的大作中提到】
: This guy is really protecting the american people!
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