Boehner: Amnesty After GOP Primary Filing Deadlines

A new report from the Texas-based Quorum Report, published by longtime Texas journalist Harvey Kronberg, says that House Speaker John Boehner plans to push amnesty legislation through the House, after the primary filing deadline for candidates. The move would prevent Tea Party from challenging GOP lawmakers who support amnesty in 2014.

Scott Braddock reported on Tuesday that “in recent weeks, various Texas business interests have told Quorum Report that Boehner has been telling them that he will start holding immigration votes not long after the filing deadline has passed.”

Braddock noted that those business community sources spoke with him “on condition of anonymity because their conversations were held behind closed doors and they added it wasn’t made clear to them just how confidential the information was meant to be.”

“Nevertheless, what was made clear was that Boehner felt the need to protect House Republican incumbents who are otherwise seen as conservative but have expressed an openness to immigration reform that includes a robust guest worker program,” Braddock wrote, before citing three specific Texas GOP congressmen: Reps. Ted Poe (R-TX), John Carter (R-TX) and Sam Johnson (R-TX).

Carter and Johnson were, until recently, members of the House version of the “Gang of Eight.” Carter and Johnson left the group in mid-September, stating that President Barack Obama’s selective enforcement of immigration laws concerns them. They felt he would selectively enforce whatever Congress passed in any kind of immigration reform package. “The administration's practice of hand-picking what parts of laws they wish to enforce has irrevocably damaged our efforts of fixing our broken immigration system,” the Texas lawmakers said in a joint statement at the time. “If past actions are the best indicators of future behavior, we know that any measure depending on the president's enforcement will not be faithfully executed. It would be gravely irresponsible to further empower this administration by granting them additional authority or discretion with a new immigration system. The bottom line is - the American people do not trust the president to enforce laws, and we don't either.”...

This news from the Texas donor community comes as Boehner hired amnesty advocate Rebecca Tallent as his new immigration policy adviser...

Tallent previously worked for Senate “Gang of Eight” member Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) on immigration policy. She helped him and the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) draft their final immigration proposal—one that ultimately failed.

“During her time with McCain, she helped the Arizona Republican draft a handful of immigration overhaul measures, including the last big push McCain made with the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., in 2007,” Roll Call wrote of Tallent on Tuesday. “In 2008, she was a policy adviser on McCain’s presidential campaign. Before working for McCain, she worked for former Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., a longtime advocate of overhauling the immigration system who was involved in immigration efforts before he retired in 2006.”