With the Republican Party doing dismally among the key Latino electorate, you might expect party leaders to make peace overtures to them. Instead, the most prominent Congressional Republican on immigration, Lamar Smith, came out today on Fox and attacked the DREAM Act, which is universally popular among Latinos. Smith head the Judiciary Committee of...
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Lamar Smith is proposing a new “braceros” to bring migrant farmworkers to the United States for short periods to tend and harvest crops. Smith, head of the House Judiciary Committee, is an important opponent of any immigration reform that would improve the legal status of the undocumented immigrants who make up 60% to 70%...
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When Congress gets back to business in September, Representative Lamar Smith is expected to push new legislation making E-Verify mandatory. This would require employers to check all new hires against a database of people eligible to work. While E-Verify has been shown to have a high error rate, ruling many people ineligible to work...
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Over the last six years the Republicans have made employers one of the whipping boys of the immigration debate. In proposal after proposal, at the state and federal level, new anti-immigrant bills have targeted employers with heavy fines and criminal penalties for hiring undocumented workers and burdensome paperwork requirements mandate employment authorization verification. Since...
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Last week, the Republicans on the Judiciary Committee held a hearing trying to drive a wedge between immigrants and African Americans. The new strategy of Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, Immigration Subcommittee Chairman Ed Gallegly, and Vice Chair Steve King is to claim that immigrants take away jobs from African Americans. The effort was immediat...
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Opportunities for Republican Latinos to pick up support in their own community may be slipping away. The Latino march towards the Democrats began when anti-immigrant rhetoric emerged in many Congressional races in 2006 and intensified in the last two elections. Republican opposition to the DREAM Act and the selection of notoriously anti-immigrant Congressman Lamar...
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Lamar Smith, one of the most anti-immigrant Members of Congress, was unanimously elected by Republicans to head the powerful House Judiciary Committee. The Judiciary Committee is responsible for passing immigration laws and oversight of the immigration system within the Department of Homeland Security. Smith has vowed not to allow the legalization of undocumented immigrants...
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Steve King-Congressional Leader, Minuteman
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Lamar Smith is likely to head the House Judiciary Committee from which immigration bills in the house originate. Recently, Smith’s hometown newspaper, the Austin American Statesman looked at Smith’s opinions on citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants, so-called “birthright citizenship”. Here is a bit of what they wrote: Smith: “Every industrialized country that...
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Politico described Lamar Smith as “less interested in getting in the spotlight and more interested in driving immigrants out of the country”. He has sponsored lots of anti-immigrant legislation. And now he will be in charge of the Judiciary Committee, the place where immigration bills get started in the House of Representatives. The Wonk...
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