Fox News -- Bruce Parker
As California battles a flood of immigrants seeking driver’s licenses after enactment of Assembly Bill 60, Vermont’s Department of Motor Vehicles has found issuing driver’s privileges to illegals can be a magnet for benefits fraud.
Reuters -- Daniel Trotta
The United States and Cuba clashed over U.S. immigration policy on Wednesday at the first session of high-level talks seeking to restore diplomatic ties between the Cold War adversaries.
The Americans vowed to continue granting safe haven to Cubans with special protections denied to other nationalities while Cuba complained the United States encourages Cuban doctors to defect, calling it a "reprehensible brain drain practice."
Immigration-enforcement champion Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., is slated to take over the Judiciary Subcommittee that oversees immigration, according to media reports. Sen. Sessions has been a leading critic of President Obama’s executive amnesties and a leading advocate for protecting American workers from the adverse consequences of historically high levels of immigration.
Washington Examiner -- Susan Ferrechio
With the Senate poised to take up a spending bill that defunds President Obama’s executive actions on immigration, a conservative faction of House lawmakers want their counterparts in the Senate to step up their game.
Politico -- Seung Min Kim
House Republican leadership plans to bring a border-security bill to the floor next week — the first move on immigration reform this year following last week’s House vote to roll back President Barack Obama’s executive actions on immigration.
The GOP leadership announced the plans at a closed-door party meeting Wednesday morning, sources said. The legislation comes from House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mike McCaul (R-Texas), who unveiled the 72-page bill last week.
Bloomberg -- Heidi Przybyla
Senator Marco Rubio said a comprehensive immigration plan won’t be passed by Congress because many lawmakers don’t believe the enforcement provisions would be carried out.
“The only path forward that has any chance of success is to bring illegal immigration under control” first, said Rubio, a Florida Republican. Then Congress would act to “modernize the illegal immigration system,” he said at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast.
National Journal -- Sophie Quinton
Even if a court decision stops the federal government from moving forward on President Obama's latest executive action on immigration, the city of Los Angeles will keep doing everything it can to help undocumented residents gain legal status.
"We're going to move forward. We can't afford not to," Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said Tuesday at a National Journal event in Washington, D.C. underwritten by the Emerson Collective.
Politico -- Ben Schreckinger and Seung Min Kim
Republicans sent mixed signals on immigration in their two official rebuttals to President Obama Tuesday night: Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst’s rebuttal made no mention of the topic, but the Spanish-language version of the rebuttal, delivered by Florida Rep. Carlos Curbelo, said Republicans wanted to work with Obama to fix the immigration system.
Politico -- Manu Raju
Top Republicans are exploring ways of escaping their political jam on immigration, with steps that could avoid a funding cutoff for the Department of Homeland Security while letting conservatives vent their anger at President Barack Obama.
So much for the open, respectful discussion of key issues that Pres. Obama advocated in his State of the Union address. It came after after taunting the assembled Members of Congress that his unilateral executive actions on immigration that completely by-passed Congress are beyond any further discussion.
