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1. GOP vow to kill any amnesty
2. Feds seeks lawsuit dismissal
3. AZ Gov. snubbed by White House
4. Atlanta asks Gov. to reconsider
5. Advocates purchase attack ads

1.
Comprehensive immigration reform probably doomed
The Associated Press, April 20, 2011

President Barack Obama revisited a key campaign promise when he hosted a White House meeting of elected officials and experts on immigration. But if a major overhaul of the nation's immigration policy is his goal, Republicans in Congress say he shouldn't hold his breath.

They say any bill that even hints at amnesty or legalization for millions of illegal immigrants already living and working in the United States is dead before it ever makes an appearance in a congressional committee.

A path to citizenship is "what has doomed all immigration legislation in the last two administrations," California Republican Dan Lungren said during a recent House hearing on immigrant agricultural workers.

The agricultural workers' bill discussed during that hearing, which first was proposed in the last Congress, isn't likely to be revived.

"It's not going to pass," Lungren said matter-of-factly while taking testimony on the visa program that helps supply temporary workers to agricultural businesses. "And it's not going to pass because it has, frankly ... a path to citizenship."

Rep. Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, said immigration reform proposals that offer a path to legal status are tantamount to amnesty.

"I think most members of Congress and most Americans don't want to reward lawbreakers and don't want to give them amnesty," Smith said Tuesday as Obama held his White House meeting.

The failure of the DREAM Act is a key example. The bill would have provided a path to legal status for law-abiding young people brought to the United States as children who either plan to attend college or join the military.

"Remember, in the last Congress, the Democrats had large majorities and weren't able to pass the comprehensive amnesty bill," Smith said. "I don't think that bipartisan resistance to mass amnesty has (abated)."

Obama also promised to continue working to build a bipartisan consensus around immigration and said he would lead a "civil debate" on the issue in the months ahead, the White House said. But he also said he will not succeed if he alone is leading the debate.

"The president asked the group to commit to moving forward to keep the debate about this issue alive, to keep it alive in the sense that it can get before Congress, where the ultimate resolution of it will have to be obtained," said Bill Bratton, the former police chief in Los Angeles and New York City. "The idea being to go out into our various communities and to speak about the issue."

According to a statement from the White House, "The president urged meeting participants to take a public and active role to lead a constructive and civil debate on the need to fix the broken immigration system. He stressed that in order to tackle the issue successfully they must bring the debate to communities around the country and involve many sectors of American society in insisting that Congress act to create a system that meets our nation's needs for the 21st century and that upholds America's history as a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants."
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http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gyOqGIyoeCQDjDxCwEYF_S...

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2.
Feds seek dismissal of Brewer's immigration suit
The Associated Press, April 20, 2011

The U.S. Justice Department has asked a judge to dismiss Gov. Jan Brewer's lawsuit that accuses the federal government of failing to secure the border and enforce immigration laws.

Brewer filed the action as a counter-lawsuit to the Justice Department's attempt to invalidate Arizona's immigration enforcement law.

The Justice Department tells U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton in filings that Brewer's counter-lawsuit raises questions of a political nature and that Bolton's court wasn't the right place to air Brewer's grievances.

Brewer's counter-lawsuit claims the federal government has failed to protect Arizona from an "invasion" of illegal immigrants. It seeks increased reimbursements and extra safeguards, such as additional border fences.
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http://www.necn.com/04/20/11/Feds-seek-dismissal-of-Brewers-immigrati/la...

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3.
Jan Brewer: White House snubbed me on immigration talks
By Jennifer Epstein
Politico (DC), April 20, 2011

Fresh off her veto of her state’s “birther” bill, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer says that the White House gave her a “snub” by leaving her off the guest list for a meeting about immigration reform.

“I wish I would have been invited,” the Republican said Tuesday night on Fox News. “You would have thought one of the governors would have been invited, since we are on the front lines fighting for security there. It was a little bit of a snub, if you will.” More broadly, she said, the meeting illustrated a disconnect between President Barack Obama’s immigration policy goals and the reality on the ground in border states.

Obama sat down Tuesday with a group that included New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the Rev. Al Sharpton, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-Calif.). The guest list didn’t include any current governors or members of Congress, though it did include some business leaders, including the COO of Facebook and former Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.), who now works for JPMorgan Chase.

The list of attendees leaned toward those who would support the Obama administration’s approach to immigration. The meeting itself has been framed as an effort to show Obama supporters that he is trying to make progress on the issue even if it’s doomed to stall in Congress.

Brewer, meanwhile, has been a foe of the administration’s immigration policy. The Justice Department filed suit against Arizona to stop the state’s controversial illegal immigration law Brewer championed — which requires all immigrants to carry documentation and allows police to arrest suspected illegal immigrants without a warrant, among other provisions — from being enforced. Brewer filed a countersuit earlier this year in response, saying the federal government has failed to protect her state from an “invasion” by illegal immigrants. Last week, a court refused to lift a stay on the law, and the Justice Department responded by asking a judge to dismiss the countersuit, The Associated Press reported early Wednesday.
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http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0411/53460.html

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4.
Atlanta asks for reconsideration of immigration bill
By Ernie Suggs
The Atlanta Journal Constitution, April 20, 2011

The Atlanta City Council, fearing a serious financial blow to the city’s multi-billion-dollar tourism and convention business, is calling on Gov. Nathan Deal to not sign controversial House Bill 87, the Arizona-like legislation that targets illegal immigrants by allowing police to investigate documentation status of suspects.

As in Arizona, council members are concerned that conventions and organizations may begin to boycott Georgia and specifically Atlanta, which is driven by its tourist-based economy.

Councilman C.T. Martin, who drafted a resolution calling for Deal not to sign the bill, went so far as to call HB 87 a “moral problem.”

“This is a human issue also,” Martin said. “This country was founded on immigration. Why do we all of sudden have no sense of being sensitive to the issue? They ought to slow it down and let’s have some real creative level thinking on this issue.”

Deal told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution last week that he would sign the sweeping immigration bill, which was passed by the House earlier in the week 112 to 59 largely along party lines. The senate passed it 37-19.

On Tuesday, Brian Robinson, a spokesman for Deal, gave no indication that the governor would be interested in changing his mind.

“The illegal population of Georgia has ballooned over the last decade. We know beyond a shadow of a doubt that comes at a huge cost to taxpayers,” Robinson said. “We know the federal government has taken no action to crack down on the unregulated flow of undocumented workers into our state or any other. And we know they’re taking no steps toward creating a workable permitting program that would allow Georgia to resolve its labor needs while also allowing us to enforce the rule of law. What we have now makes a mockery of the rule of law.”

Atlanta is not alone in its concerns, although governments across the metro area have been divided.

The Fulton County Commission has also gone on record opposing House Bill 87. Last month during a report from the commission’s state lobbyist, Commissioner William “Bill” Edwards moved to oppose the bill and the panel did so by a vote of 4-2.

In DeKalb County, officials are considering how they want to address the bill.

In Gwinnett County, where the population is now more than 50 percent minority, the board of commissioners has not addressed it.

Nor has Cobb County, which has been at the forefront with immigration issues, including its participation in ICE’s 287(g) program that allows jail deputies to screen inmates to determine their immigration status.
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http://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta/atlanta-asks-for-reconsideration-916627....

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5.
Immigrant supporters attack opponents with radio ads
By Patrick Mazzei
The Miami Herald, April 20, 2011

A group of immigration advocates in Miami is turning up the heat on local lawmakers over an illegal immigration crackdown proposed in Tallahassee.

Starting on Wednesday, three organizations — Democracia Inc., SEIU Florida and America’s Voice Education Fund — will begin airing Spanish-language radio advertisements calling out two Miami Republicans, Sen. Anitere Flores and Rep. Carlos Lopez-Cantera.

The spots attack the legislators for “betraying Florida’s Hispanics” by “supporting” a pair of proposals moving through the state Legislature.

Lopez-Cantera, however, has said he is against a strict Florida House measure. So is Flores, though she is sponsoring a different version of the bill in the Senate.

“An anti-immigrant and anti-Hispanic law hurts, but it hurts much more when one of us supports it,” the minute-long ad says in Spanish. Flores and Lopez-Cantera are Cuban-American.

Critics liken the proposed legislation to a controversial immigration law approved last year in Arizona. The courts blocked parts of the law from being enforced. Proponents in Florida say that, absent federal immigration reform, the state needs to ensure the nation’s laws are followed.

The House bill, headed to a full chamber hearing, would require police to check the immigration status of a person who is subject of a criminal investigation if there is “reasonable suspicion” that the person might be undocumented. Employers would be mandated to check employees’ immigration status.

Its Senate counterpart would not go quite as far. It would have police check the status of an inmate, not just a person under investigation, and give employers more wiggle room on how to ascertain if employees are legally allowed to work.

Flores, whose measure hit a roadblock in a budget committee last week, has argued that the bill would be harsher if she were not in charge. On Tuesday, she said it is misleading to suggest she and Lopez-Cantera support Arizona-style legislation.

"I am not in favor of any Arizona-type laws. I am not in favor of a law that would deputize police officers to become immigration agents," she said. "The result of these ads will be to divide our Hispanic community, which I think is very unfortunate."

Lopez-Cantera, the House majority leader and chairman of the Miami-Dade delegation, reiterated Tuesday that he plans to vote against the proposal.

“Florida doesn’t need an immigration law,” he said. Two other Miami Republicans, Rep. Frank Artiles and Jeanette Nuñez, voted against the House plan in a committee last week.
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http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/04/20/2176132/immigrant-supporters-attac...