Jeff Sessions has been my favorite Senator for the better part of 15 years. With regards to the issue of immigration (both legal and illegal), he’s been a lone paleo voice in the Senate. Politico has a piece on Sessions that, for me, makes the air fresher and food taste better. (“Immigration-hardliner Sessions could execute crackdown as AG”):
For two decades in the Senate, Jeff Sessions led an anti-immigration crusade that made him an outlier in GOP politics — raging against illegal immigration and an excess of foreign workers well before Donald Trump tore onto the political scene.
But next year, Sessions likely will be the one engineering the immigration crackdown.
If confirmed as Trump’s attorney general, the Alabama senator would instantly become one of the most powerful people overseeing the nation’s immigration policy, with wide latitude over the kinds of immigration violations to prosecute and who would be deported.
As the nation’s top cop, Sessions would be able to direct limited department resources to pursuing immigration cases. He could launch federal investigations into what he perceives as discrimination against U.S. citizens caused by immigration. He would be in charge of drafting legal rationales for immigration policies under the Trump administration.
And Sessions, as attorney general, could find ways to choke off funding for “sanctuary cities,” where local officials decline to help federal officials identify undocumented immigrants so they can be deported.
Some immigrant advocates are alarmed by the idea of a Justice Department led by someone they see as far outside the mainstream.
Yes, such views are certainly ‘far outside the mainstream’…. if by ‘mainstream’ one meansimmigrant advocates.
Sessions has also been a longtime critic of the proliferating and anti-U.S.-citizen-worker H1-B visa program:
It’s not just illegal immigration policies that have riled up Sessions. Last year, he and a bipartisan group of senators pressed then-Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate potential visa abuses at Southern California Edison, a utility company that had been accused of laying off hundreds of workers in favor of cheaper foreign workers through the H-1B visa program.
As attorney general, Sessions would be in a position to lead those investigations himself.
Oh, and there will be his oversight of prisons:
The attorney general also oversees the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Sessions could work in tandem with the Department of Homeland Security to ensure that immigrants here illegally would be deported immediately after serving time.
We know Dems will try to block him on everything, but they don’t have the votes.
So, who do we need to worry about? The John McCains and Lindsey Grahamnestys of Congress:
Sessions has often been on the losing side of immigration clashes in the Senate, adopting stances at times seen as too restrictive even for fellow Republicans.
He fought tooth and nail against a comprehensive immigration reform measure drafted by the so-called Gang of Eight in 2013. He advocated not only against legalizing undocumented immigrants but also pushed for a hard cap on all legal immigrants — a policy that had little support, even from Republicans.
Sessions has moved from a lone Senate voice to the Attorney General of the United States…. under a President Trump.
Did you ever imagine you’d ever see anything like this happen in your lifetime?