Sunday School 1/28/24: Extra Credit

Your Sunday School lesson was all about immigration, and we're continuing that conversation for your Extra Credit. 

I want to note that the House Homeland Security Committee released two articles of impeachment against Homeland Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

In its 20-page resolution, the Republican-led committee accuses Mayorkas of high crimes and misdemeanors, including "willfully" disregarding immigration law...

Chairman Mark Green, R-Tenn., said the committee had "exhausted all other options to hold Secretary Mayorkas accountable" and that "Congress must exercise its constitutional duty and impeach him."

Now, back to the classrooms, starting with Meet the Press. Kristen Welker talked about the bill with Democratic pollster Cornell Belcher and Matt Gorman, who worked on Sen. Tim Scott's campaign. 

Welker referenced what I characterize as the rock - Donald Trump - and the hard place - the "best possibility of getting a deal in decades" between which the Rs sit. Gorman, who believes President Biden can act unilaterally, said the whole thing reminds him of The Sixth Sense. 

It's been dead a month. No one noticed it yet... The White House and the Senate are acting like they're the only people involved in this. They're not. 

Belcher reflected on our sad history (my words, not his) of 'doing something' about immigration, only to have politics get in the way. We've seen it before, he said,

...(in) 2007 Bush wanted to do immigration. They – they attacked it as amnesty for illegals. Obama thought he had a deal with Boehner. He took it back to the House, and the Republicans killed it...

He said Sen. Tom Tillis (R-NC) who's "not exactly a liberal," says what the Rs are doing 

may be immoral, because they're killing it because president Trump thinks it's good for his politics.

Martha Raddatz (ABC's This Week) shared a taped interview in which Jon Karl asked Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-RA) about the six million people who have been apprehended at the border. 

What ultimately should happen to all those people, you know, the people who don't qualify for asylum, or totally came in illegally?

Newsom said  "You have to deal with the cards that are dealt. You've got to deal with the reality on the ground," but that the "fundamental issue" is, we need immigration reform, not just border security. 

Biden's strategy includes a pathway to citizenship "along the lines of (the GOP's) former hero, Ronald Reagan," Newsom said, adding there's a "$14B plan, right now," that gets us judges and border agents; Congress's refusal to act is just the Rs trying to

... find a crowbar to put in the spokes of the wheels of the Biden administration to disrupt any progress on this because they don't want progress, period.

Raddatz got an interesting response from National Review Editor Ramesh Ponnuru when Sen. Lindsey Graham's name came up. He noted Graham's support doesn't matter much to many Republicans; he's long advocated for "comprehensive immigration reform," but

there are a lot of people in the Republican Party who don't see things the same way Lindsey Graham does on immigration and don't trust him on this issue because they don't agree with him.

Ponnuru also shared where opposition to the bill comes from. Paraphrasing here, some Rs seem to think the 5,000 daily limit is like the rent in NYC - it's too damn high. But that's not all.

...you've got this more basic thing, which a lot of Republicans say, 'if the problem is Biden is not enforcing the laws that are already on the books, which is what they have been saying for months, then passing a new law isn't a solution to that problem.'

I want to swing back to the State of the Union classroom. Dana Bash asked former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) if she was OK with the bill not including "a pathway to citizenship, or even protections for Dreamers." 

Well, no; the fact is, is that we need comprehensive immigration reform. That's not likely with the Congress that we have right now, so we have to move forward. This arrangement that the Democrats and Republicans in the Senate have negotiated is a step forward... But we were never going to get a path to citizenship in this bill. 

I'm giving the last word to Bakari Sellers, a CNN political commentator. He chastised the Ds who "have refused to pay attention to immigration and crime in this country, saying it really didn't exist, it wasn't a problem." What's needed now is the folks who have complained,

we need our good mayors, like Frank Scott from Little Rock, like Chokwe from Jackson, Mississippi, we need Randall Woodfin from Birmingham, Alabama, and we even need mayors who don't know what they're doing, like Eric Adams in New York City, to now simply stand up for this piece of legislation and say, 'this is what we need done.'

This has to be the messaging and the messengers who can get this done for the country. This is not a problem that you kick down the road... This is something you fix right now. This is a problem. Fix it.

That sure beats merely complaining about the other side, doesn't it?

See you around campus, where I'm sure this will continue to be a topic through the election and beyond, if we're smart.