As you may be aware, all immigration provisions were stripped from this week’s War Appropriations bill. There were several reasons that the immigration provisions were stripped, including germaneness, interest in adding some family immigration provisions, and Congress’ desire to quickly move on the Appropriations bill before Memorial Day. That bill may ultimately be vetoed by President Bush, in which case there may be a small chance of reattaching some immigration provisions to a reconstituted Appropriations bill.
HR 5924 is gaining a lot of steam. We’re up to five named co-sponsors and HLG knows of two more House members who will co-sponsor but it hasn’t been made public yet. The named co-sponsors are:
Rep Sensenbrenner, F. James, Jr. [WI-5] – 4/29/2008
Rep McCarthy, Carolyn [NY-4] – 5/14/2008
Rep Putnam, Adam H. [FL-12] – 5/14/2008
Rep Cohen, Steve [TN-9] – 5/22/2008
Rep Pastor, Ed [AZ-4] – 5/22/2008
This is very good progress considering that the bill has only been public for a month. Several other Representatives have said that they will support the bill, but they will not formally co-sponsor.
The most important thing that we can do at this point is to increase the number of co-sponsors. HLG and the CTIHS have been to Washington DC twice in the last two weeks to walk the halls of Congress and inform Congressional staffers about the issue. We are continuing to actively seek more members to the CTIHS in order to raise our profile. If you are interested, please contact Chris Musillo.