NumbersUSA
Chris Chmielenski

Earlier this week, the House Republican Conference held its highly-anticipated, closed-door immigration meeting where Members were to decide how to proceed on the issue after the Senate passed its mass amnesty bill two weeks ago. GOP Leadership along with two committee chairmen issued a statement after the meeting saying that the House would not consider the Senate bill, S.744, and would continue with its piecemeal approach to immigration reform.

The fate of S.744 took another blow this week when Ways & Means Chairman Dave Camp tweeted that the House would not consider the Senate bill because it raises revenue, which is a power reserved exclusively for the House under the Constitution. Texas Rep. Steve Stockman was the first one to take issue with the constitutionality of the Senate bill and has been encouraging House Leadership to "blue-slip" the bill. Coincidently, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has yet to send the bill to the House, and some speculate that it's because he, too, is concerned with the bill's constitutionality and doesn't want it killed by the House for that reason.

The House's piecemeal approach is already in action. To date, the House Judiciary Committee has already passed four bills - a mandatory E-Verify bill, an interior enforcement bill, an Ag guest worker bill, and a high-skilled visa bill. The Homeland Security Committee has already passed a border security bill. It's unclear whether or not the full House will vote on any of these bills before the August recess.

Roy says: "The bills range from great to not-bad to terrible. The vast majority of the harmful elements in the Senate bill are not found in these bills."

While the statement issued by the GOP Leadership and the votes taken in the House have thus far been hopeful, there's still some uncertainty with how House Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor want to proceed. During the GOP Conference meeting, Speaker Boehner told Republicans that they have to pass something. Whether that means an amnesty bill or other immigration-related legislation is unknown. Furthermore, details began to leak out yesterday that Majority Leader Cantor has begun drafting a DREAM-like amnesty bill.

GOP Leadership has also been vague about how they would handle a possible conference with the Senate. The House could pass immigration legislation and task a group of Members to conference with Senate conferees to merge the House-passed legislation with S.744, and we fear that a conference bill would look a lot more like S.744 than the bills currently being considered in the House.

While there may be a lot of uncertainty, we do know a few things for sure. First, the House will not consider S.744 or move on an amnesty bill before their August recess. Second, House Members will be back in their districts in August to gauge the feelings of their constituents. That means the August recess will be critical in killing an amnesty this year. We'll be sending along activism opportunities over the coming weeks.

Chris Chmielenski
Fri, July 12th

BREAKING NEWS: Earlier today, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced that she is stepping down to become the President of the University of California system. In June of 2012, Sec. Napolitano ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to violate federal immigration laws by granting deferred action to illegal aliens who might qualify for the DREAM Act. More than 250,000 illegal aliens have been offered a two-year amnesty through the directive. A federal district judge is expected any day to issue a first ruling on the suit against Napolitano's order as brought by immigration ICE agents and financed by NumbersUSA's members.Read more here.

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