Reform Bill Set for March

Immigration reform is likely to be on the docket for discussion in the Senate by the end of March, according to sources on Capitol Hill.

With Congress now in Democratic hands, a meeting last week between Senators John McCain, Ted Kennedy and Arlen Specter fleshed out a possible schedule for action on the issue.

Democrats are going to spend the first few months passing popular legislation such as a new minimum wage and college tax credits before the tougher issues are dealt with.

Specter, still head of the Senate Judiciary Committee until January, had hopes of passing some kind of bill in the lame duck session of Congress but was getting no help at all from Congressman James Sensenbrenner, his counterpart in the House, who was not playing ball.

The trio decided that it was much more likely that March was a realistic deadline to have the McCain/Kennedy bill reintroduced in the Senate and passed.

The feeling is that the original Kennedy/McCain bill is a real runner this time, not the watered down version that got passed out of the Senate earlier this year.

That is good news for immigration advocates. Also good news is the departure from the Senate of hardliners such as Rick Santorum, Conrad Burns, Jim Talent and George Allen, who had all voted against the previous legislation. Of the defeated Republican senators, Mike De Wine in Ohio and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island were in favor of Kennedy/McCain.

Given that, there appears to be an excellent chance that the bill will pass through the Senate by the end of April if the current timetable is adhered to.

Fate in the House

Of course, a version of Kennedy/McCain passed the Senate and then failed to be taken up in the House during the current session of Congress.

What are the prospects of the House taking action, now that a new immigration bill approved by the Senate will undoubtedly be making its way there in late spring or thereabouts?

The role of President Bush will be absolutely critical when and if the bill comes up for discussion. Republican insiders believe that Bush could sway up to 80 representatives from his own party to vote for a comprehensive bill if he puts all his weight behind it.

If Bush can swing 80 House members then the bill will undoubtedly pass. There has been more than enough coverage of the backlash among Hispanics for the Republican attacks on illegal immigrants during the campaign.

Bush’s strategists are said to have penciled in Hispanics and Catholics as the two biggest groups that Republicans need to win back before the next election if they are to have a chance of taking the House or the Senate back.

Pelosi’s Role Uncertain

Key in all the speculation is House Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi, who has given no indication yet as to how she will proceed on the issue.

There is a school of thought that Pelosi may not want to get involved with immigration reform because it remains a highly controversial issue.

The New York Times in an editorial this week warned Democrats that if they decided to duck and cover on immigration in the new Congress that voters would be very unforgiving.

However, the editorial also pointed out that there was still considerable and vocal opposition which might make lawmakers decide to shelve the issue once again.

Pelosi comes from a mixed ethnic neighborhood in San Francisco, one of the most Hispanic cities in the U.S., so it is unlikely she will seek to ignore it altogether, especially at it seems certain a bill will come across from the Senate.

Durkan’s Finest Moment

The late Frank Durkan’s famous comment that George Harrison had been running guns for the IRA for many more years than the prosecution asserted has been widely reported in the wake of Frank’s death this week.

It was not the only extraordinary moment in the trial of five Irishmen in a Brooklyn court in 1982 on charges of running guns for the IRA.

Harrison, who freely admitted to shipping about 2,500 guns to the IRA, was the chief suspect implicated by a CIA operative, George De Meo, who had been compromised himself in a Libyan arms sting.

De Meo gave up Harrison and Harrison, in turn, unknowingly implicated then Noraid head Mike Flannery when the feds wiretapped Harrison.

Harrison is heard on the tapes discussing money for buying guns from De Meo with Flannery.

Despite the extraordinary amount of evidence against them, the men got off by Durkan convincing the jury that the CIA were complicit and had set the men up.

There was another turning point in the trial when Flannery insisted on speaking in his defense at the summation.

After talking about the links between the fight for Irish freedom and the American revolutionary war Flannery summed up. “Over there sits Mrs. Thatcher,” he told the jury, pointing out the prosecution. “And here behind me sits George Washington.” It was powerful stuff and clearly influenced the jury at the time.

Also on the defense team was Barry Scheck, later the Project Innocence lawyer who has cleared many death row inmates by insisting on DNA samples from the crime scenes.

The case was a sensation at the time and it was Durkan’s finest moment.