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It is difficult to find words to describe some of the horrors of history. The treatment of the Jewish people (and others labeled undesired) by the Nazis is one of those horrors. In the beginning of Adolf Hitlers campaign, Jewish people were encouraged to leave Germany, but many countries including the U.S. refused to increase the number of immigrants who would be accepted. People were turned away. This lack of action led to the deaths of many.

Today a horror exists at the southern border of our country. People fleeing violence and extreme poverty seek asylum in the U.S., where the number of immigrants accepted has been lowered and the rules have been changed, forcing people to wait in inhumane conditions.

Future generations will ask, How did you let this happen?

A group of Lancastrians came together to say, This is not acceptable! WING, a group welcoming immigrants, was formed, and 440 people signed a petition that will be sent to congressional representatives. It includes the following: We are your neighbors and we are grateful that our immigrant ancestors found safety and opportunity. Today we are moved by compassion to:

Say no! to the detention of asylum seekers.

Say no! to the separation of children from their parents.

Say no! to the denial of basic dignity and human rights.

Say no! to laws and attitudes that target immigrants.

Success! An email has been sent with a link to confirm list signup.

Error! There was an error processing your request.

Say no! to prohibiting asylees from crossing the border to apply for asylum.

Together we call upon our lawmakers to enact meaningful immigration reform.

The petition can be signed at bit.ly/WINGpetition.

Martha Kelley

Lancaster

Read more here:
Group formed to welcome immigrants (letter) | Letters To The Editor - LancasterOnline

WASHINGTON - An estimated 800,000 immigrants who are working legally in the United States are waiting for a green card, an unprecedented backlog in employment-based immigration that has fueled a bitter policy debate but has been largely overshadowed by President Donald Trumps border wall and the administrations focus on migrant crossings from Mexico.

Most of those waiting for employment-based green cards that would allow them to stay in the United States permanently are Indian nationals. And the backlog among this group is so acute that an Indian national who applies for a green card now can expect to wait up to 50 years to get one.

The wait is largely the result of an annual quota unchanged since 1990, and per-country limits enacted decades before the tech boom made India the top source of employment-based green card-seekers.

The backlog has led to competing bills in Congress and has pitted immigrants against immigrants, setting off accusations of racism and greed and exposing a deep cynicism about the prospects for any kind of immigration reform in a polarized nation. The debate centers on the potential benefits of a quick fix to alleviate the wait times for those already in the backlog versus a broader immigration overhaul that could allow more workers to seek permanent residency, address country quotas and expand the number of available green cards.

Among those pushing for a quick resolution are business leaders, who worry that a congressional stalemate - doing nothing at all - could push Indian workers out of the United States and cause others to seek easier paths to citizenship in other countries.

"What does that ultimately mean? Valuable, skilled people decide they should leave because they're never going to get what they had hoped for," said Bruce Morrison, a lobbyist and immigration attorney who wrote the last bill that increased the number of employment green cards in 1990, when he was in Congress representing Connecticut. "And valuable people don't come because they figure our system is so broken they can't see their way through it. Therefore, other countries bidding for these skilled workers get those workers. Companies in America move jobs abroad to employ those skills elsewhere. And American prosperity suffers."

The crisis of employment-based green cards burst into the open in October after a narrow bill to address the issue nearly passed the Senate in a unanimous consent motion, after sailing easily through the House. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., stepped in and blocked it.

The bill's supporters cast it as an easy and obvious fix - and one that "arguably has wider and more bipartisan support than any other immigration bill that's been considered in this body in recent years," its Senate sponsor, Mike Lee, R-Utah, said after Durbin objected. "The reason for that is it's focused on a single, serious, solvable problem that I think we can all agree needs to be solved."

But Durbin and other critics of the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act, which aims to provide relief to Indians by eliminating the country quotas for employment green cards, said it isn't so simple. Because the bill did not increase the overall number of green cards, they argue the backlog will worsen, wait times for all nationalities will extend to 17 years, and a trickle-down effect will make it difficult for working professionals from anywhere other than India to come to the United States.

Durbin proposed his own bill, the Relief Act, which eliminates the country quotas but also raises the number of both employment and family-based green cards. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., also proposed a comprehensive bill.

Lee on Tuesday circulated an amended version of the bill that would not increase the number of green cards but would add provisions Durbin has sought to protect families in the backlog. It is unclear if other Senators would be on board with the new language. Families are a significant element of the backlog involves families, as spouses and children of green card applicants count toward the annual cap of 140,000 employment green cards. Under Durbin's bill, spouses and minor children would not count against the total quota, and children of applicants would no longer age out at 21, which has made them ineligible for green cards.

Yogi Chhabra, an IT professional in Louisville, Kentucky, says the backlog crisis has put his family in danger of being torn apart.

Chhabra, 55, has lived in the United States for 21 years and has been in the backlog for nine. His oldest son, now 23, is a U.S.-educated mechanical engineer who has lived in Kentucky since he was 3, but because he aged out of eligibility two years ago, his son now faces the prospect of being deported to a country he has never known.

"If he cannot find a job in eight months, he'll have to leave," Chhabra said. "It was just yesterday that he came home crying. We don't know what to say to him."

Chhabra and his wife, who has a PhD and works on kidney transplant research, have considered the possibility that they might also have to leave.

"I have been in the same job for 20 years now," he said, noting that he has been passed by for promotions because he has to stay within a certain salary range to keep his spot in the green card line. "And they say it might be 100 years, because of the speed it is going, because of the country caps . . . I'm already 55. I'm not going to live that long."

Bill Cook, general counsel to the Immigration and Naturalization Service under President George H.W. Bush, said the system has reached the crisis stage precisely because immigration policy has long been a series of limited fixes without any comprehensive approach.

"We need to have a public conversation about how many people we need," Cook said. "Eventually the system implodes because it's like a patchwork quilt of solutions."

The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, declared Durbin's bill "the best legal immigration reforms overall" and found that it would "virtually double" the total number of legal immigrants receiving permanent residence during the next decade while reducing wait times for everyone to less than a year.

But Indian tech workers have responded with desperate fury, protesting Durbin's actions because they say they think his bill doesn't have a chance in a Republican-controlled Senate.

"The point is it cannot pass. Not with Trump in office," said Aman Kapoor, the leader of Immigration Voice, an activist group that backed the original legislation and has led a weeks-long campaign against Durbin, calling him a "racist" and accusing him of "ethnic cleansing" for stopping the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act. "You can't add one green card now under Trump."

Indians need a solution now, Kapoor said. "Every day you see someone in the backlog is dying. Or kids are aging out," Kapoor said. "People are very stressed out because of the backlog."

A green card is the final step in the legal immigration process - before becoming a U.S. citizen - and the government doles out about 1 million per year, 140,000 of which are employment-based. The most common green card involves a family member as sponsor.

An allotment system devised in the 1960s to promote diversity stipulates that no country can take more than 7% of certain types of green cards, such as those linked to employment, in any year. Extraordinarily high demand from certain countries has led to the backlogs.

In the employment category, approximately 75% of the backlog is Indian, the result of a growing tide of Indian migration since the 1990s, fueled by the tech boom. The rest are Chinese. Because the applicants for family-based green cards are predominantly Mexican and Filipino, the wait time for the Mexican and Filipino adult siblings of U.S. citizens, for example, is more than 20 years.

But unlike those in line for family visas, the workers in the employment backlog already are in the United States on temporary visas. According to immigration attorneys, workers and policy experts, the wait can be devastating.

When workers in the backlog die, their families lose their spot in line and are subject to deportation; the same is true for children who turn 21.

In October, the widow of an aviation systems engineer whose family lost its spot on the waitlist when he was killed in a 2017 hate crime published a commentary in the Kansas City Star, comparing Durbin to the man who killed her husband. The attacker shouted "get out of my country," as he shot and killed Srinivas Kuchibhotla, an Indian tech worker.

Durbin was achieving the same outcome by blocking the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act, she argued.

Legal analysts concluded that under the bill, nearly all of the green card recipients for the first several years would be Indians, given their number in the backlog. Rather than alleviating the problem, the bill would pass it on to people from other nations, they said.

"Do the math," Ira J. Kurzban, a prominent immigration law scholar, wrote in an analysis he circulated to colleagues. He noted that in one of the employment-based categories - EB-2 - there are 40,040 green cards allocated a year, and "there are 550,000 nationals waiting for residency, of which 512,000 are Indian."

A first-come, first-served distribution would mean that for years it would be only Indians - and some Chinese - getting employment-based green cards, analysts say. It would take 12 years just to hand out the green cards needed for the Indians in that one subsection of the backlog, and that doesn't take into account the hundreds of thousands more who would be expected to join the list during that time.

An analysis by the Congressional Research Service in 2018, conducted before the bill was introduced, found that Indians would make up almost the entire backlog for a minimum of four to five years. An analysis by the Cato Institute calculated it would take eight years. Many prominent immigration attorneys have backed Kurzban's analysis.

Kurzban calculated that the backlog would grow from more than 800,000 people today to 1.1 million in 2029.

Because most of the backlogged Indians work in the tech industry, the shift would mean that high-skilled workers in other areas "like health care and medical research . . . will be shut out of residency for well over a decade," Kurzban wrote. "Potential new Americans in basic science, engineering, chemistry, physics, artificial intelligence, climate change and many other fields who are not Indian nationals will be discouraged from ever coming to the U.S."

Adding to the complexity, most of the backlogged Indians are on specialist H1-B visas, which are perpetually renewable for those waiting in the backlog - making it possible to wait - while other nationalities typically come on other types of visas that cannot be renewed if an immigrant intends to stay. A long wait thus becomes impossible.

"The wait will be so long that non-Indian workers won't be able to get in line," said Michelle Canero, another immigration attorney who ran her own analysis of the numbers. Canero also said that direct foreign investment, almost none of which comes from India, will suffer because foreign companies will not be able to move their top professionals into the United States to run their satellite offices.

"Every year, foreign direct investment adds about $300 billion to our economy," Canero said. "About 85% is European and Canadian . . . If we now say that these foreign nationals who establish their operations here can no longer immigrate to oversee their investment, I think we're going to see a deterrence."

The projections have drawn an array of non-Indian immigrant groups, such as United We Dream, a coalition of recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, and the National Iranian American Council, to back Durbin's proposal. The American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) has joined them, and Rep. Donna Shalala, D-Fla., introduced a companion bill in the House.

Despite the backlog, a provision that unused green cards roll over to those in line means that Indians actually have collected about 20 percent of the employment-based green cards during the past decade - well above the quota, and at least double the amount any other nationality received.

Indians who are collecting their green cards today have been waiting at least 10 years. Chinese have been waiting four. Other nationalities wait less than two years.

Immigration Voice and Compete America, a coalition of mostly tech companies that includes Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook and Google, say the extended wait times expected under the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act are irrelevant. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

"The employment-based green card system was developed to help employers find workers," said Scott Corley, Compete America's executive director. "At no point was it discussed that, 'Hey, listen guys, this really needs to be about diversity.' " Diversity, he said, can be found in family-based immigration.

The top priority should be removing the country quotas that are "fundamentally bigoted" - because they automatically "discriminate" against people with Indian citizenship, rather than judging them for their skill set - he said. "Nobody who actually works in Washington believes we're going to solve the green card issue any time soon."

Anand Vemuri, 46, an IT professional in New Jersey, is losing hope. His sons, now 16 and 13, came to the United States as toddlers. The family has been in the backlog for seven years, and he said he thinks he won't get through by the time his older son ages out of eligibility.

Vemuri's success in the United States has no impact on his chances of obtaining a green card. He owns a townhouse, serves as the vice president of technology at Barclays and has watched his children excel in school.

But Im getting a feeling that Im hitting a roadblock, he said. I dont see any hope here.

Follow this link:
Green card backlog for legal workers in US tops 800000, most of them Indian. A solution is elusive. - Anchorage Daily News

Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden exploded on Thursday during a presidential debate when he was asked about reparations for African-Americans, saying that immigrants are the future of America and people should get used to it.

The reason were the country we are is because of immigration, Biden responded to the question about reparations. Weve been able to cherry-pick the very best from every single continent.

The people who come here have determination, resilience, they are ready to stand up and work like the devil, Biden continued. We have 24 out of every 100 children in our schools today is Hispanic. They idea that we are going to walk away and not provide every opportunity for them is not only stupid and immoral but its bad for America.

They are the future of America, Biden continued. And we should invest in them. Everyone will benefit from them, every single American and you should get used to it.

This is a nation of immigrants, thats who we are, thats why were who we are, thats what makes us different and we should invest in them, Biden concluded.

WATCH:

Progressive podcast host Tim Black called Biden, writing on Twitter: Joe Biden says hes chomping at the bit to talk about Reparations and then proceeds to speak for 40 seconds without mentioning Black people once, yet uses the term immigrants thrice. #DemDebate

Daily Wire Editor at Large Josh Hammer wrote the following about Bidens views on immigration earlier this year:

Biden voted for the George W. Bush-era Secure Fence Act of 2006, but has also consistently supported amnesty policies throughout his career including the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007 and the failed Gang of Eight immigration bill in 2013. Biden served as vice president when Obama issued two major unilateral executive amnesties, DACA in 2012 and DAPA in 2014 each of which has been fiercely opposed by conservatives and has been challenged in high-profile lawsuits.

Excerpt from:
Biden: Immigrants 'Are The Future Of America,' 'You Should Get Used To It' - The Daily Wire

Jean Nsengiyunva, who escaped the Democratic Republic of the Congo as a child, has been trying for three years to gain refugee admittance for his wife and 3-year-old daughter. (IBJ photo/Eric Learned)

Gov. Eric Holcomb is giving the green light for federal officials to continue placing refugees in Indiana, following in the footsteps of a growing group of both Democratic and Republican governors who are opting in to the federal program.

The move comes after President Donald Trump issued an executive order in September that, for the first time, required states and local government to provide written consent to continue to receive even a handful of the 26million refugees worldwide.

Its part of the Trump administrations larger effort to reduce refugee resettlement in the United States.

Varga

And even though the state has allowed refugees to resettle here for years, Holcombs decision was not considered a slam dunkhes a Republican in Vice President Mike Pences home state at a time immigration (which is different but related to refugee resettlement) is especially controversial. While governor, Pence tried to block federal officials from placing Syrian refugees in Indiana.

Holcomb could have effectively vetoed refugees from coming to the state, said Cole Varga, executive director of Exodus Refugee Immigration Inc., a group that helps bring refugees to Indiana and receives federal funding for its programs. Exodus is affiliated with Church World Service, which is one of nine national organizations that work directly with the federal government to settle refugees in the United States.

The initial deadline for submitting that consent was Dec. 2590 days after the executive order was issuedbut Varga said guidance from the State Department has indicated the deadline is now Jan. 21.

Holcomb sent a letter on Dec. 13 offering his consent.

Our long tradition of welcoming and helping to resettle refugees with support from our federal partners, shows the world the compassion of Hoosiers and our willingness to give others the ability to grow and prosper in the great state of Indiana, Holcomb wrote.

He is one of eight Republican governors who have given consent or said they will do so. Fifteen Democratic governors have taken similar action.

Yang

On Dec. 17, Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett sent a letter with his consent, which was also needed for refugees to be allowed to continue coming to Marion County.

In other parts of the state, the responsibility is on county commissioners to offer consent. Varga said Exodus and the two other organizations in Indiana that help refugees once they arriveCatholic Charities of Fort Wayne and Catholic Charities Indianapolisare working to secure letters from other local governments.

National organizations have also gotten involvedBaltimore-based World Relief and Washington, D.C.-based Evangelical Immigration Table this month sent letters to 15 governors, including Holcomb, urging their support.

Jenny Yang, vice president of advocacy and policy at World Relief, said her group targeted governors they believed might be on the fence about what to do and those in states that welcome large numbers of refugees.

Indiana has welcomed more than 11,600 refugees since 2011, and is home to the most Burmese refugees in this country.

Indiana took in nearly 1,900 refugees in 2016, just before Trump took office. It took in 865 last year and has placed just 116 this year. The steep drop has been the direct result of Trumps efforts to cut back on the program.

Yang said she wasnt necessarily surprised by Holcombs decision to continue to take in refugees, but shes grateful he took that step.

We wanted to make sure he was aware of how many churches and church leaders wanted to welcome refugees, she said.

Its complicated

Downs

Andy Downs, director of the Mike Downs Center for Indiana Politics at Purdue University Fort Wayne, said Indiana Republicans have a nuanced relationship with refugee policies.

I think that a good number of conservative individuals understand and believe that they should help refugees, he said. But were also fearful about our safety.

Immigration reform has been a top priority for Republicans as the Trump administration has pursued some controversial policies, like building a wall along the U.S. and Mexico border to prevent individuals from crossing it illegally.

Refugees, on the other hand, are individuals fleeing persecution for race, religion, nationality, political opinion or social group.

Holcomb stressed that point in his letter of support to Exodus.

These are NOT illegal or unlawful immigrants but individuals who have gone through all the proper channels, were persecuted for their religious or political beliefs in their homeland and have sought and been granted refugee status in our nation of immigrants, Holcomb wrote.

Downs said Holcomb can also make a compelling political argument for opting in Indiana, because he would not have wanted to be one of the only governors that didnt do so.

Part of the beauty here is, this is a federal program, Downs said. If something goes wrong, hell be able to point at the feds.

That doesnt mean he wont suffer at least a little political consequence from the far-right side of the Indiana Republican Party.

But thats a fraction of the party, and hed only have to worry about that in the primary, Downs said.

Republican Brian Roth has announced plans to challenge Holcomb in 2020, but Roth has to gather 4,500 signatures500 from each of the states congressional districtsto even get on the ballot. Even if Roth meets that threshold, Holcomb is expected to easily survive the primary.

Downs said an issue like this could change the minds of some voters, but its likely most Republicans approve of Holcombs decisions on other topics, like spending or taxes.

It could be that someone says, Yeah, he got that wrong, but he got tax policy right, Downs said. Its just hard to imagine it being enough to energize anyone.

Struggle for families

Jean Nsengiyunva has been trying for three years to get his wife and daughter to Indianapolis. Without the written consent from Holcomb and Hogsett, that process would have essentially been stopped for the foreseeable future.

Nsengiyunvas family fled the Democratic Republic of the Congo when he was 6 years old. He spent the next 20 years in a United Nations refugee camp in Uganda waiting to come to the United States and considered the camp home.

We had lost hope of coming to the USA, Nsengiyunva said.

Varga said refugees in the camps are often uncertain when theyll be selected, but those who are the most vulnerable or who already have family members or other connections to the United States are usually priorities.

Its kind of like a lottery system, Varga said. Certain people get picked and certain people dont.

In 2014, Nsengiyunva finally started the interview process to come to the United States after 18 years in Uganda. It took two years to complete all the necessary paperwork, interviews, and background and medical checks, but in 2016, he made it to Indianapolisa place he had never heard of before.

During that two-year period, Nsengiyunva met his future wife. He tried to add her to his case, but that would have essentially restarted the process. The couple made the decision that Nsengiyunva should go without her, believing it wouldnt take as long for her to get through the system.

The federal government limits the number of people who can come into the country through the refugee process, and that number can change annually.

In 2016, the United States admitted nearly 85,000 refugees. President Barack Obama set a limit of 110,000 refugees in 2017.

Trump has since significantly slashed the program. For fiscal 2020, Trump has set a limit of 18,000 refugeesan all-time low for the program. That greatly narrows the chances that Nsengiyunva will be able to bring his family here.

We didnt know things were going to change, he said.

American support

Critics of Trumps executive order have argued its another way his administration is trying to limit access to the United States for people from other countries. But the White House says the order makes sure refugees arent being placed in communities that would be unwelcoming.

The months following the executive order have been full of uncertainty for the organizations, like Exodus, that work to place refugees. Varga said that detailssuch as how to actually submit consent letters, who has the authority to issue the consent at the local-government level, and who is responsible for getting these letters to the State Departmenthave all changed at least once.

In addition, a federal lawsuit challenging the executive order is pending, and a judge could rule before the Jan. 21 deadline to at least temporarily block it from taking effect.

Yang said Holcombs decision helps send a strong message to the Trump administration that, regardless of what party youre from or political spectrum youre on, this is something most Americans support.

Varga said accepting refugees helps Indiana prove its Hoosier hospitality mantra.

It just makes sense to welcome, to open our doors to people, he said. Were helping make Indianapolis more diverse and interesting, in addition to helping people.

Varga also said refugees are helping with the states workforce shortage, because theyre filling jobs and contributing to the economy.

Nsengiyunva works full time at a Nike warehouse in Lebanon, and lives in an apartment with his mother, father and brother, who joined him here shortly after he moved in 2016.

The New American Economy Research Fund estimated that Indiana would have lost $4.6million annually in economic impact by not welcoming refugees.

Holcomb also referenced how refugees help the states economy in his letter of support.

Developing a 21st century skilled and ready workforce is a high priority of our administration and we will welcome those who are ready to participate fully in our economy, showing civility and compassion to those who have suffered persecution, Holcomb wrote.

Nsengiyunva is still hopeful that his wife and 3-year-old daughter can move here soon. His wife has started the interview process, but the limit of 18,000 refugees nationally could push back her timeline.

Im just waiting now, he said.

See more here:
Holcomb opts in to accepting refugees - Indianapolis Business Journal

Washington was abuzz over the weekend over the decision of Rep. Jeff Van Drew to leave the Democratic Party and join the Republicans, precipitated by the Democratic House's impeachment of President Donald Trump. This was a historic move, and one likely not as knee-jerk (or single issue) as the press has been reporting.

In a November 27, 2019, post captioned "What Do Voters Really Think About Immigration? Interesting takeaways from a report apparently prepared for Democratic group", I wrote about a poll that had been purportedly commissioned by a group called "House Majority Forward", which I noted describes itself as "a progressive, non-profit organization committed to promoting economic growth and opportunity, social justice, environmental stewardship, and democracy in the United States of America."

I explained by way of background:

[T]he report purportedly covers the results of research on "two groups of White non-college voters", both male and female, from two congressional districts in New Jersey, NJ-02 (which covers the southern part of the state, currently represented in Congress by Rep. Jefferson Van Drew (D-N.J.)), and NJ-03 (in the middle of the state and cutting it in two, currently represented by Rep. Andy Kim (D-N.J.)).

Kim defeated incumbent Republican Rep. Tom MacArthur by fewer than 4,000 votes in the 2018 election, while a well-financed Van Drew defeated Republican Seth Grossman by fewer than 20,000 votes in 2018 (there were four other contenders), in a race for the seat that had previously been held by Republican Rep. Frank LoBiondo.

I noted that there was an interesting takeaway in the "Overview" section of the report:

Most of the respondents across all of the groups said they side with Trump on immigration. Almost to a person, immigration was described as a matter of bringing "control" to our borders and immigration system (the treatment of children at the border barely came up during the groups).

In fact, among the males surveyed, national security and immigration were more important than abortion rights and government spending, and the respondents did not mention impeachment or Syria until they were asked.

Logically, Van Drew had to have known of this report (not that I think he reads my column, but it focused on his district and the report received attention but not a lot elsewhere). Long story short, if that report is accurate, his constituents plainly supported the administration on immigration, but were not that interested in impeachment, positions directly at odds with Democratic party leadership.

Switching parties is not as common as one would think. Rep. Justin Amash (Mich.-3) switched from Republican to independent in July, but that was largely because he is a libertarian and believed that the GOP was no longer a party of "limited government, economic freedom and individual liberty", and because he was fed up with the two-party system, which he views as "an existential threat to American principles and institutions". It is doubtful that he would find a home in the current Democratic party he has voted with the president's positions more often in the current 116th Congress (81.1 percent of the time) than he did in the last Congress (54.2 percent) but he did vote to proceed with impeachment. He is more of a man without a party than a man in the wrong one.

Rep. Parker Griffith (Ala.-5) opted to leave the Democratic Party and become a Republican almost a decade ago out of frustration with then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House leadership. His switch was a bellwether for GOP successes in the 112th Congress (2011-2013), when the party won back control of the lower chamber. It didn't help Griffith much, though he lost to Republican Mo Brooks in the ensuing primary, and then lost to him again in the next one.

Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.) switched from Republican to Democrat in 2009, all but giving the Democrats a supermajority in President Barack Obama's first term. It did not help him or the Democrats in the long-run, either: Specter lost the 2010 primary in a landslide to Rep. Joe Sestak, who lost the general election to Republican Pat Toomey.

Notably, as CNN reported at the time: "Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele ripped Specter, calling him a Republican in name only who was out of step with the rest of the party because of his 'left-wing voting record.'" I worked with his staff on legislation, and would have been a bit more charitable, but Steele was not entirely wrong.

Sen. Richard Shelby (Ala.) switched from Democrat to Republican in 1994, reflecting a trend in the South toward the GOP, as did Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell (Colo.) in 1995 following the defeat of a balanced-budget amendment that he supported and Democrats opposed. Sen. Jim Jeffords (Vt.) switched from Republican to independent, caucusing with the Democrats and giving them control of the Senate in 2001. Jeffords' defection reflected a rift between moderates and conservatives in the GOP, and shifting allegiances in the Green Mountain State.

It is difficult to view Van Drew's switch as anything other than a rejection of the Democratic party's positions on many issues, including immigration. I gave plenty of caveats about the validity of the House Majority Forward survey in my November post, but one particular finding resounded with me: "When asked what Congress should try to work with Trump to achieve, immigration was the dominant response and as we heard in the beginning of the conversation, that would mean controlling immigration."

There are real problems at the border that the president has identified on numerous occasions, but Democrats in power and their supporters in the media seemed to be oblivious to them until they were undeniable. Even then, their responses were largely just a rehash of the positions they had taken before, and an effort to deflect blame on to the president.

For example, Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) blamed President Trump's "'refusal to move forward' on comprehensive immigration reform as 'contributing to that humanitarian crisis'", while at the same time asserting that "'there's a lot we could do jointly and should do jointly' in Congress ... to address the border situation." Of course, no such legislation has been forthcoming, despite the president's stated willingness to reach a deal.

There is a saying on Capitol Hill: "When you stop representing your constituents, soon you will stop representing your constituents." Jeff Van Drew has learned this lesson. Immigration propelled Donald Trump to the White House. For the sake of the now 30 Democratic House members in seats the president won in the 2016 election, and her own speakership, Nancy Pelosi should learn this lesson on immigration as well.

Link:
Rep. Van Drew Joins the GOP - Immigration Blog