Progressives have devised a plot to move immigration reform through Congress, and they couldn’t refrain from broadcasting it at Generation Progress’ — formerly known as Campus Progress — day-long youth conference Wednesday.
Somewhere between the emotional testimony of Marco Quiroga, a gay, undocumented young person of color, and a plea for fewer deportations of young illegals by Cristina Jimenez, managing director of the immigrant-advocacy group United We Dream, the progressive plan to pass the Senate’s immigration bill managed to surface.
“The strategy would be, we need to force a different bill to come out of the House,” said Fred Redmond, International Vice President of Human Affairs for the United Steelworkers, during a panel discussion on immigration reform. “And then what happens is, if you’ve got one bill out of the House and one bill out of the Senate, they go to a conference committee. If you force two divergent bills to a conference committee, our coalition of progressives puts pressure on that conference committee to formulate a bill that makes sense.”
If all goes to plan, the Left hopes the House bill will duke it out with the Senate’s legislation — which the panel, entitled We Are American: Why Fixing Immigration is a Top Priority, believes is a good start. Still, the group agreed some adjustments should be made.
During the committee review process, progressives intend to place substantial pressure on members, hoping to coerce them into producing legislation that echos the Gang of Eight’s and caters to the progressive agenda.
The Left hopes it will emphasize amnesty before border enforcement, eligibility for federal benefits to newly legalized immigrants, and an emphasis on the value of family ties when considering admission and work visas.
However, the progressives’ strategy relies on the House to release immigration legislation, which has been delayed numerous times since a bipartisan coalition of seven representatives began addressing the issue.
Nonetheless, if and when a House bill is revealed, progressives will face quite an uphill battle to assure their legislation comes out on top.
“What we’re gonna have to do is really ram up our efforts during that period while the bill is in conference to put pressure on folks and see if we can correct some of the things in the [current Senate] bill that makes the bill totally incomprehensible,” Redmond said.
