Quote (Black XistenZ @ Sep 5 2017 10:06am)
so?! what's your point? you yourself confirmed that congress hasnt found a solution during the last 8-12 years although it should have. that attempts have again and again failed due to the resistance of immigration hardliners should maybe have taught them that they cant force an immigration reform through which disregards those elected officials' stance on the issue. hence, the other members of congress would have had to come up with a compromise that is acceptable to this group of representatives and senators.
My point was exactly what I wrote: Congress did act, multiple times times. It was simply unsuccessful because of factional GOP resistance.
This new portion of your post is ridiculous though: there's absolutely no rationale for why we should bottleneck the legislative process for (what had become by 2013) such an extremely-small minority.
Quote
...btw what about the time from 2008 to 2010 when democrats controlled the white house and the house of representatives, and had a supermajority in the sentate? why didnt they pass immigration reform at that time?...
This
also gets basic legislative history from Jan 09 until Jan 11 mostly wrong (don't worry, I'll adjust the dates for you). Republican groups kept the eventual 60th Dem seat tied up in frivolous lawsuits until July 2009. An ailing Ted Kennedy spent much of his final months away from Congress, periodically dropping Democrats again back to 59 after Franken was eventually seated. Kennedy's successor was seated in late Sept after the summer recess but only served until early Feb 2010.
As for the
why the Dems didn't use those few calendar weeks to try to tackle immigration, the answer is likely the Great Recession. Despite starting that term off putting together a large economic stimulus, this counter-intuitive narrative took hold that Democrats "focused on healthcare when they should have been focused on the economy," despite the reality that they started with the stimulus. Had the Dems used that same 20-month window that they spent on the ACA to instead focus on immigration during this time of high unemployment and massive job loss then I expect the fantasyland-based criticism they received would have been even worse.
The Democratic House did end up passing the DREAM Act in 2010 either way, but the GOP filibustered it in the Senate.