Immigration Bill Amended To Death

The Gang of Eight's Immigration Fight : The New Yorker:

The long-awaited immigration-reform bill written by the haplessly named Gang of Eight in the United States Senate got buried this week, not unexpectedly, by a great mudslide of amendments—more than three hundred, at last count. The bill was eight hundred and forty-four pages to begin with. Some of the amendments were sensible and humane—Senator Patrick Leahy’s suggestion that the legislation include same-sex marriage in its definition of family, for instance. Many were malicious. Senator Ted Cruz, of Texas, proposed that anyone who had ever lived illegally in the U.S. be barred for life from U.S. citizenship. The primary purpose of this overhaul, of course, is to offer the eleven million people believed to be living here illegally the chance to become legal—to give those who qualify a “pathway to citizenship...”