God know what drama is playing behind the scene! Today,
www.immigration-law.com reported as follow
03/16/2007: Disappointing Delays in Congress Action on Immigration Reform Legislation
* Immigrant community was indeed looking forward to the introduction of McCain-Kennedy bill last week. Then, Senator Kennedy's office released an information that more likely date was this week. Surrounding this delay in introduction of so-called Kennedy bill, the media noticed development of a serious political hurdle which had been created by the Senate Democrats' sideling of the Republicans from the process and emotional revolt of the Republican Senators against the Leahy-Kenndy move, forecasting a dark stormy cloud ahead.
* As expected, the Senator Kennedy's move to introduce this new bill has been eventually abandoned and the fate of CIR has returned to ground zero. The Senate Judiciary Committee that has to act on this legislation is currently obsessed with a drama involving political scandal of firing of U.S. attorneys allegedly as motivated by political agenda of the White House and U.S. Attorney General. Under the circumstances, the Judiciary Committee is unlikely to mark up the CIR debate in the next one week or so. How disappointing!
* There is a consensus in the community that the longer the Congress delays, the slimmer the chances will be for the Congress to enact a CIR legislation. This is particularly true as more and more states are moving up the 2008 national election primary to earlier dates. Yesterday, California governor signed a legislation moving up the primary to February 2008! There may be a few other states that will follow the suit of California, including Florida. This change of primary in the key states has already charged the country politically hotter and hotter. Amen!
), AILA has sent several thousand lawyers to DC to lobby for CIR. They have spent 100K on lobbying this last yr. They seem to be hopeful, but many house reps and senators are not responding reportedly.