Senate to hold UAFA Hearing

An encouraging development: Senator Patrick Leahy will convene a congressional hearing on UAFA next Wednesday, June 3rd.

For a legislation that never made it out of the committee, this is indeed a significant step forward. However, the outcome of the hearing remains unclear: will it mean that UAFA will finally come to a committee vote and advance to the full senate/house for a floor vote? Or is it merely a move to make sure UAFA has a place in the upcoming Comprehensive Immigration Reform? From the IE blog post, it seems that the latter is more likely.

If UAFA does become a part of CIR, how optimistic should we be?

Many prominent Democrats like Harry Reid and Charles Schumer have expressed confidence of a CIR passage by the end of the year. The unknown factor is whether or not the conservative Republicans will mount the same relentless attack as they did during the Bush Administration, successfully killing CIR in spite support of Bush and many pro-immigration Republicans. While many Republicans have realized that being an anti-immigrant party will push their already dwindled support to further oblivion, this simple fact has yet to dawn on its extreme right wing, who is apparently comfortable being a regional party. This wing will no doubt continue to see CIR as an opportunity to launch another attack on the Democrats and the moderates in their own party. While circumstances have changed quite a bit since 2007, CIR is still very much an uphill battle. As one politician put it succinctly:"Compared to CIR, Healthcare Reform is a cake walk."

And that's saying something.