Congressman’s Shuler number one priority in the House right now is getting his SAVE Act to the floor for a vote. Moving things along was a portion of his rationale for voting to move the telecom immunity/FISA bill quickly. Homeboy even tried a nifty parliamentary maneuver whereby a bill can come directly to the full House, but he’s saying that John McCain called the Republicans who hadn’t already signed on and told them to chill. Nancy Pelosi doesn’t want it to come to the floor either.

If your number one issue is immigration, and you like the SAVE Act, then you’d better send Heath a thank you note, because he’s certainly doing everything he can think of to get the thing passed. Immigration is way down my list of priorities for the country, but the polls of this district make it clear immigration is the end-all, be-all for a large majority of Shuler’s constituents.

So Heath is diappointed with the Democratic leadership, the Republican Presidential candidate, and, evidently, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, too. From Blue Ridge Now:

“Shuler said he is not excited about any of the three presidential candidates left in the race — McCain, U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton and U.S. Sen. Barack Obama. He said fringe elements of both parties have too much influence on the process.

“When I look at the presidential candidates, I don’t think any of the three gives me a sense that we can come together,” Shuler said.

He cited President John F. Kennedy as an example of a leader who unified the country. He said Kennedy had a vision and brought the country together to put a person on the moon. Shuler said the country was unified after the 9/11 attack, but seems to be more divided now.

“We seem to have lost a little,” Shuler said.”

I’m guessing Shuler’s not aware that President Kennedy “initially proposed an overhaul of American immigration policy that later was to become the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, sponsored by Kennedy’s brother Senator Edward Kennedy. It dramatically shifted the source of immigration from Northern and Western European countries towards immigration from Latin America and Asia and shifted the emphasis of selection of immigrants towards facilitating family reunification.[39] Kennedy wanted to dismantle the selection of immigrants based on country of origin and saw this as an extension of his civil rights policies.” – Wiki

It’s not surprising that illegal immigration hasn’t united the country the way the terrorist attacks of 9/11 did. I expected the Democratic leadership would help Shuler get SAVE passed, but they’ve decided to avoid the issue. For a minute it looked like Shuler would get enough Republican support to force a vote and maybe pass the thing despite the Democratic leadership. Now it looks like SAVE is dead in the water.

No wonder Shuler’s peeved, he’s pinned a lot to making this thing happen, and now it looks like he’ll have to wait another year to try again.