Thread: GOP leader reveals strategy for immigration bill push

Daily Caller
Neil Munroe
01/13/2014

GOP leader reveals strategy for immigration bill push

“We’re trying to find a way to give the members of the House a way to see how all these things would work in our step by step approach. … Finding a way to build that consensus is critical.”

Goodlatte is under intense pressure from House Speaker John Boehner who is trying to pass an amnesty-and-guest-worker bill, so “we don’t know where the real Bob Goodlatte is,” Beck said.

The GOP’s leadership will try to persuade GOP legislators to back an immigration plan that includes tighter enforcement, an effective amnesty for 12 million people and more immigrant workers, according to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte.

“We’re trying to find a way to give the members of the House a way to see how all these things would work in our step by step approach. … Finding a way to build that consensus is critical,” Goodlatte told an interviewer Sunday on the Spanish-language Telemundo network.

But Goodlatte acknowledged deep GOP opposition to the plan, and indicated that the leadership won’t push a plan in the face of broad opposition in the caucus.

“We have to have something where a sizable majority of Republicans can support it,” he said.

GOP legislators will likely be pressed to support the series of immigration bills at a closed-door strategy session in West Virginia, starting Jan. 23.

However, Goodlatte and the interviewer, Jose Diaz-Balart — the brother of Florida GOP Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart — largely ignored the most contentious issue, which is industry’s demand for an increased inflow of foreign low-wage workers.

The Senate’s June bill would triple legal immigration over the next decade, by awarding green cards to 33 million immigrants and work permits to roughly 13 million guest workers. That influx would be larger than the 28 million teenagers in the country, and also larger than the pool of 20 million unemployed and underemployed Americans.

Any House bill would have to be merged with the demands of Senate Democrats before it could be signed by Obama. The president and his aides have said an immigration increase is one of his highest second-term priorities.

Goodlatte has won committee approval for a bill that would allow food-industry companies to hire 500,000 guest-workers a year.

Since last year, influential business donors — such as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg — and progressive advocates have played up the unpopular amnesty issue, so minimizing media coverage of the very unpopular effort to increase low-wage immigrant labor.

The political obstacles described by Goodlatte include intense public suspicion of President Barack Obama’s willingness to enforce parts of any immigration deal that he does not like.

“There have been — not just with this president — but a history of presidents not enforcing our immigration laws,” he said.

There “has to be an agreement that there’s not going to be a future wave of illegal immigration. … That is difficult to bring together,” he said, citing the 1986 amnesty bill that yielded three million legal immigrants and many millions of illegal immigrants.

The distrust is boosted by the president’s unilateral change to the 2010 Obamacare law, Goodlatte said. GOP legislators see “a president who steps in and says, ‘You know what? That didn’t quite work out the way I wanted so I’m gonna change this. Or I’m gonna change that.’ But he doesn’t have the authority,” Goodlatte said.

One fix would be legislative language granting greater enforcement authority to the states, he said. ”That’s why we think there needs to be, for example, involvement by the states and local governments, not just the federal government, in dealing with the issue,” he said.

The deal could delay some benefits to the 12 million illegal immigrants — such as “legal status” — until the government has established some system that lets companies determine if a proposed hire is a citizen or a residents or a legal guest worker, he said.

“We can say the legal status is not provided until things like employment verification — electronic employment verification or entry/exit visa programs are up and operating effectively,” he said.

Goodlatte should get some credit for his emphasis on boosting security inside the country, not just at the border, said Roy Beck, the founder of NumbersUSA, a group that pushes for low immigration levels. He is also right to be skeptical of presidents’ willingness to enforce laws, said Beck.

Goodlatte, however, also endorsed an amnesty and more foreign workers, said Beck. “He didn’t show any concern for American workers and the reason you have immigration laws is to protect workers and the unemployed,” Beck said.

Goodlatte is under intense pressure from House Speaker John Boehner who is trying to pass an amnesty-and-guest-worker bill, so “we don’t know where the real Bob Goodlatte is,” Beck said.

In his TV interview, Goodlatte didn’t use the word “amnesty.” The word spikes public opposition to the planned deal, according to focus groups run by consultants such as Frank Luntz.

http://dailycaller.com/2014/01/13/go...ion-bill-push/

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Inside Boehner's Election-Year Immigration Strategy

The speaker's looking to test the waters ahead of primaries, and he'll score a political win no matter how it turns out.

(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)


By Fawn Johnson


January 14, 2014

John Boehner is planning to unveil a set of Republican principles for immigration reform before President Obama's State of the Union address, aiming to show the GOP is not hostile to legislation that might win them Hispanic voters.
According to House leadership and immigration-policy aides, the principles will be broad, nebulous even, and heavily focused on Republicans' favorite immigration issue—border security. It will not include any concrete proposal, they said. Indeed, the wording is likely to be intentionally squishy, giving lawmakers lots of room to maneuver.

"We can win in 2014 without resolving it. We can't win in 2016 without resolving it," said Senate Minority Whip John Cornyn.

But no matter what happens, Boehner will come out a winner just for the effort. If it flops over hardliners' objections to anything that approaches amnesty for illegal immigrants, Boehner and Republican campaign leaders looking for cash can still tell the business community they tried. What's more, it could lay the groundwork for a Republican overture to Hispanic voters, a group everyone sees as critical to winning in 2016.
"We can win in 2014 without resolving it. We can't win in 2016 without resolving it," said Senate Minority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas.


Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy, Republican Conference Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers, and immigration-law expert Bob Goodlatte, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, are writing the principles with Boehner.
They intend to start vetting them with House Republicans, likely next week after GOP leaders hold a meeting to prep for their conference's Jan. 29 retreat. By the time the principles go public (or are leaked), leadership hopes to have more than half of the conference on board.
Then, according to aides, the plan is to gauge public reaction. If House members are deluged with nothing but hate mail from their districts, Republicans might decide to do nothing but emphasize border security, perhaps even voting on the border bill produced last year. That's at least until 2014 primary-election filings are over. (The biggest threat to Republicans on immigration is in the primaries anyway, strategists say. No one will lose in the general election because they are too soft on immigration.)
But if leadership's principles receive some positive feedback, Goodlatte, Cantor, and Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., could advance legislation they have discussed for the last several months. As yet, there is no legislative language drafted, however. Cantor and Goodlatte have talked about a path to citizenship for undocumented "dreamers" who came to this country as kids. Even Rep. Joe Heck, R-Nev., is discussing some sort of "Dream Act." Issa is mulling broader legalization for other unauthorized immigrants. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., is trying to gather support for a legalization plan that would allow undocumented immigrants to get green cards through normal channels, such as children or spouses.
"That's at least five and maybe six or seven House Republicans getting ready to introduce legalization bills. House Republicans competing to write bills for what they once called amnesty. I think that's pretty dramatic, as I understand from the outside," said ImmigrationWorks USA President Tamar Jacoby, a Republican advocate for immigration reform who is familiar with the House strategy.
Jacoby likens the "piecemeal" approach to immigration reform to the seven courses of a Thanksgiving dinner—all the pieces add up to a voluminous whole. "Everything will get done fairly quickly over a few days or weeks," she said. "In leadership's conception, the pieces address pretty much all the major issues."
Cantor told his caucus in a memo at the beginning of the year that immigration could be one of the topics that make it to the House floor "over the next few months."
The odds remain low for the House to advance legislation that might win lots of Democratic support, although some lawmakers, such as Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., will probably applaud the effort and encourage the negotiations to continue. And House Republicans will certainly face opposition from conservatives like Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, who disapprove of any action on immigration while President Obama is in the White House.
What Boehner is hoping for, however, is that a majority of the GOP conference—the middle-of-the-road folks who listen to their local chambers of commerce and sympathize with the need to court Latinos—will have a different view than King and other hardliners.
And if they do, they could win sizable concessions from liberals to change the immigration system. They could dramatically bolster border and worksite enforcement and rein in the current family-based "chain migration" system.
It would also be a huge win for Boehner. He could rightly state that he found a politically plausible answer to the most difficult public-policy question facing Congress. He could dismiss criticisms that he is more bluster than substance. And the proposal, whatever it is, would put conservatives in the driver's seat in negotiations with the White House. It would be awfully hard for President Obama to have an immigration solution in hand and reject it.

This article appears in the January 15, 2014, edition of NJ Daily.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/congr...ategy-20140114