Citizenship

The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee says he’ll do everything in his power to make sure the lower chamber of Congress never considers the Senate’s comprehensive immigration bill – a piece of legislation which would extend a 13-year path to citizenship for about 8 million of the nation’s 11 million undocumented immigrants.

In a statement on Monday, Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) wrote that he would renounce his Canadian citizenship because he didn’t think it befitting of a senator to have citizenship in more than one country. Cruz was born in Canada but left when he was 4.

A trend of visa fraud in the United States has seen citizenship-seekers from various countries pretending to be Cuban in order to secure the unique immigration privileges afforded them.

The Arizona senator says the "border surge" amendment in the Senate bill could be amended in a House compromise, but the path to citizenship is not negotiable.

In an interview with the Daily Caller on Thursday, Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) said he would likely support a limited “amnesty” for certain undocumented immigrants if the US-Mexico border were appropriately impenetrable, but added that he was “reluctant to say that amnesty is a possibility because I am not very confident about the probability of getting to that point. We haven’t seen a president that can do this in my adult lifetime.”

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and former Mitt Romney running mate told a North Dakota radio station on Thursday the GOP doesn't want to "push people into citizenship". He added, "Most people just want to have a legal status so they can work to provide for their families."

"These children were brought here of no accord of their own, and frankly they're in a very difficult position," said House Speaker Boehner (R-Ohio) at a press conference. Details on the bill have not been released, but it could set up a showdown between House Republicans and advocates of a path to citizenship for a much larger group of undocumented immigrants.

In four interviews with Telemundo and Univision stations on Tuesday night, President Barack Obama drew a line of sand over what immigration reform must include for him to get on board, saying a pathway to citizenship for the nation’s undocumented “needs to be part of the bill”.

Gridlock reigns on the question of immigration reform. After a two-hour meeting on Wednesday to discuss the GOP’s approach on immigration, Republicans rejected the Senate bill and its path to citizenship for the undocumented and indicated it would continue to consider small bills reflecting the priorities of its most conservative members.

The former president spoke today about immigration reform at a naturalization ceremony at his newly minted presidential library in Dallas, but stopped short of offering policy recommendations, saying he didn't want to "get involved in the politics or the specifics of policy".

Democrats from the House of Representatives met on Tuesday with the four Senate Democrats who helped write the Senate’s immigration reform legislation to discuss the party’s strategy in handling the issue. They told reporters afterward that they would not support any major bill that does not include a path to citizenship for the nation’s undocumented.

The House is slated to unveil its own bipartisan, comprehensive take on immigration reform after the July 4th Congressional recess. It will reportedly offer legal status to many of the nation's 11 million undocumented, but it remains to be seen whether it will offer a path to citizenship.

Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin posted a photo on Friday to her Facebook page attacking GOP members who supported the immigration reform bill which just passed in the Senate. Her opposition to the bill's proposed path of citizenship stands in contrast to her position in 2008, when she told Univision anchor Jorge Ramos that she supported the idea, although she did not favor "total amnesty".

Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in the opinion of the majority ruling that a 1993 federal voter law "precludes Arizona from requiring a federal form applicant to submit information beyond that required by the form itself."

Undocumented immigrants who arrived to the U.S. before Dec. 31, 2011 and lived there continuously since could apply for provisional legal status.