The road to passing a immigration reform bill continues to hit some potential roadblocks with gay rights groups pushing harder for gay-friendly amendments while a new group has joined the ranks of those opposing the bill.
The National Citizenship and Immigration Services Council, a labor union representing federal officers who vet immigration applications, issued a statement Monday announcing that it would oppose the comprehensive immigration bill created by a bipartisan U.S. Senate group and backed by President Obama.
As the L.A. Times notes, Kenneth Palinkas, president of the National Citizenship and Immigration Services Council, said in the statement that the bill would "damage public safety and national security and should be opposed by lawmakers."
With 12,000 staff and officials represented by the union, most of which work at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Palinkas declared that he was concerned that immigration agents would be required to approve a flurry of applications for citizenship without requiring one-on-one interviews or other fraud-preventing measures.
The changes to immigration law made by the Obama administration created conditions where immigration officials were "pressured to rubber stamp applications instead of conducting diligent case review and investigation," Palinkas added.
Their announcement came as legislators from Congress continued to debate the amendments proposed for inclusion in the bill at the Senate Judiciary Committee. However, the council is not alone in its opposition as the National ICE Council, which represents roughly 8,000 deportation officers and staff members at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, also issued a letter recently that voiced their objections to the bill.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the coin, gay rights groups are continuing to ratchet up the pressure for the immigration bill to include provisions that would allow gay U.S. citizens to sponsor their partners abroad for visas.
According to Politico, U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., was at a recent meeting where he reached out to prominent gay politicians and activists in New York, where he tried to explain why an amendment for same-sex couples could be hard to pass in Washington.
Already, GOP officials at the House and Senate have expressed their reservations on passing such an amendment, some even stating that the inclusion of such language could be a deal-breaker for them.
According to Rachel Tiven, of Immigration Equality, those in attendance at the meeting threatened Sen. Schumer that if he failed to support gay rights in the immigration bill, his standing would suffer tremendously within the gay community, which traditionally supports Democratic candidates over Republicans.
"Sen. Schumer called the meeting because he is in trouble with a key constituency," Tiven said, although others at the meeting described the gathering as more amicable.
The legislation already has a number of people looking to take it down, including Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who has proposed an amendment that derails the pathway to citizenship. However, the bipartisan senators who crafted the bill, some of which sit on the Senate Judiciary Committee, have previously vowed to vote in line to block any attempts to dismantle the pathway to citizenship for millions of immigrants living illegally in the U.S.
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