Sen. Jefferson Beauregard Sessions Again Leads Fight Against Immigration Reform
Day after day, Sen. Jeff Sessions argues against an immigration overhaul bill that GOP party leaders, and a sizable share of his Republican colleagues, say is critical to any chance of a national comeback for the party out of power in Washington.
The legislation headed for passage in the Senate would cost the nation jobs and depress wages, Sessions says in the Judiciary Committee, on the Senate floor, in hallway interviews and to just about anyone who asks. It’s not paid for, he argues. Nor, Sessions adds, would it guarantee better border enforcement.
Lawmakers don’t really know what the bill does, seeing that it consumes 1,100 pages, according to Alabama’s junior senator.
The 66-year-old former prosecutor used a similar approach to help defeat an immigration overhaul in 2006 and 2007, when a president of his own party, George W. Bush, declared it a priority. Now that Democrat Barack Obama has it atop his domestic agenda, Sessions is again the face of Republican opposition to a path to citizenship for millions of people living in the U.S. illegally. The playing field has changed since then, but the path toward a bill actually becoming law is no clearer than it was six years ago now that a sizable tea party faction holds sway in the House.
Round 3, unfolding on the Senate floor and coming soon to a town hall meeting near you, takes place in a nation that says it supports allowing at least some of the 11 million immigrants to gain legal status under certain conditions.
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