The Lady's Guide to the Big, Throbbing Immigration Reform Bill

Slip into something more comfortable and let your mind wander to its darkest, dirtiest corners, because it’s about to get really fucking sexy in here: who wants to talk immigration reform? Thick, rock hard immigration reform? The immigration reform bill the US Senate just passed might not be the sexiest, or even, like, the fourth sexiest topic in the news today (mmm George Zimmerman’s lawyer’s jowls), but it’s still — to borrow a phrase from the Vice President — a BFD. Here’s why, and what it could mean to you.

For many moons, “immigration reform” has been a pretty sweet nothing uttered during election season by politicians trying to seduce Latinos. But now that this country’s immigration system has gone from “challenging but sort of navigable red tape orgy” to “untenable bureaucratic clusterfuck,” something’s finally being done about it.

Enter the Senate’s “Gang of 8,” a small klatch of powerful nerds who put their heads together and their differences aside (kinda) to bang out a bill that addresses some — but not all — of the problems with the current way the US handles immigration. Mmmm, nothing gets me hornier than some hot, sweaty legislative compromise.

What does the Immigration Reform bill do?
Well, nothing right now but give everyone on cable news a semi. But if passed by the House, it will give the estimated 8 million undocumented immigrants currently living in the US a “path to citizenship.” It would also make border security beefier — and therefore easier to dig one’s nails into — and tune up the visa process so applicants with specific skills and high levels of education would be ushered past the citizenship velvet rope like a hot chick trying to get into a night club in the Meatpacking district. Just think — a turgid list of highly skilled foreigners who want nothing more than to please America in all the right ways. That’ll blow the Statue of Liberty’s skirt up.

In addition to the general meat of the bill, about eleventy bajillion amendments were added by Senators interested in pushing their pet causes (or dirty talking their constituents). Senator Masie Hirono of Hawaii, herself an immigrant from Japan, added 11 amendments to the bill including one that prevents families intercepted trying to illegally cross the border from being split up and another that addresses how children brought to the country illegally can apply for financial aid for college. And everyone knows what happens in college — blow jobs. God, is this immigration bill the stuff of your wildest erotic fantasies or what???

What will this cost me, THE TAXPAYER?
Muscle-ripplingly strong border security in extra tight federally mandated pants (OK, the pants thing isn’t actually in the bill) will cost about $46 billion. BUT! according to analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the law would reduce the deficit by $197 billion over the next 10 years and by another unfathomably large sum in the decade following. So, don’t worry about your wallet taking a hit. If anything, the immigration bill will gently, pleasurably stroke America’s wallet.

My uncle hates immigrants. What’s in it for him?
Tell your uncle not to worry his pretty little head about this bill not being harsh enough to people who think they can just come to this country and steal our jobs and talk Mexican all over our schools. Senate nutbags like Jeff Sessions and Marco Rubio (who is pretty much for sure going to run for President in 2016 and is really trying hard to appeal to GOP primary voters, America’s scariest demographic) don’t get to punish naughty, naughty undocumented immigrants as much as they’d like. The bill would send undocumented immigrants to “the back of the line” for citizenship and require them to pay a fine. In addition, they wouldn’t be eligible for Social Security benefits (or even friends with benefits) for time they spent working unlawfully. They’re also building a 700 mile fence along the US-Mexico border, because if we’re gonna do this immigration thing, let’s do it the safe way: with a fence ribbed for America’s pleasure.

It’s not going to fucking pass the House; so why should I give a shit?
Whoa, cheer up there, cranky! The GOP is in a tight spot, and even though Immigration Reform needs to pass through the clowncar of knuckleheads that is the House Judiciary Committee, you can bet your Agent Provocateur ouvert thong that Speaker Boehner knows as well as everyone that if the GOP kills this, they can tongue kiss the 2016 White House goodbye. Stick a fork — or a chopstick, or a tortilla chip or a large, uncomfortable sex toy — in them; without immigration, they’re done.

The bill passed the senate 68-32. That’s a huge, decisive, girthy margin of victory. Everyone wants this to pass: the White House, Leader Pelosi and Congressional Democrats, moderate Republicans, and, most importantly, American voters. Even Marco Rubio — balding, male Michele Bachmann of the Senate that he is — had the good sense to vote for this. Paul Ryan, Congress’s buffest Presidential hopeful, has gone on the record saying he believes that the bill is akin to granting undocumented immigrants (or, as they’d say in a Republican primary debate, “illegals”) amnesty, but if he doesn’t vote for it, he’s politically fucked. And not in a good way.

The problem now is that the bill will run smack into the Judiciary Committee, home of some of the Tea Partyin’-est members of Congress. It’s part of John Boehner’s job to get these assholes in line or face the mass ambivalence of voters who are not paranoid xenophobes, but the Judiciary Committee has a track record of cock blocking its own party to prove a point. So, for now, the nation waits with bated breath to see if a gang of jagoffs will continue to act like jagoffs so some guy with trucknuts will go all the way with them in the voting booth. Pundits and politicians are confident the thing will pass, and the President wants immigration reform before August in the worst possible way. But will conservative Congressmen stick their commitment to keep America lily-white? Or will they succumb to the relentless advances of the public? Time will tell.

The whole immigration debate has been really top-shelf political theater— except this time around, at the end of the play, Congress might have actually Done a Thing. And that alone is cause for celebration — or at least cause to take a cold shower.