President Obama’s executive action on immigration is coming—Immigration-palooza 2.0 is here—and Republicans won’t take it delicately. (Cue the Ron Paul “It’s happening” GIFs.) We’ve seen this movie before, and it isn’t pretty. Over the coming weeks, Republicans will unfold their strategy to push back against the president’s unilateral move, which could halt deportations for up to 5 million undocumented immigrants. It’s the first big fight of the new Congress, and the new Congress isn’t even sworn in yet.
The first thing to bear in mind with the coming immigration smackdown is that this isn’t the first time in recent memory that the Hill has fallen into mass chaos over immigration. Last year eight Republican and Democratic senators teamed up to introduce comprehensive immigration reform legislation intended to solve the increasingly pressing problem of mass illegal immigration. We all know how well that turned out: Conservative lawmakers and activists pushed back as soon as details of the bill started to emerge, Tea Party activists descended on Washington, phone lines melted, the bill passed the Senate on a 68–32 vote, and then the House did nothing and the legislation unceremoniously died.
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