Jul. 2, 2013 6:36 AM
Written by
Ledyard King
FLORIDA TODAY

WASHINGTON — GOP Sen. Marco Rubio, a favorite of the tea party movement, played a pivotal role in propelling last week’s bipartisan Senate vote approving a sweeping immigration reform bill.

But don’t expect other Florida conservatives in the House to share his enthusiasm.

Several have made it clear they don’t care much for the Senate bill and might not even take it up. That’s mostly because it would offer the nation’s roughly 11 million undocumented immigrants, including some 800,000 in the Sunshine State, a path to citizenship.

House conservatives say any immigration legislation must focus first on tighter border restrictions. They want those restrictions in place before they consider accommodating people in the U.S. illegally.

“Securing our border must be the top priority,” said Rep. Bill Posey, R-Rockledge. “The American people were promised border security as a part of the 1986 amnesty legislation, in the aftermath of (Sept. 11) and again in 2006 legislation. Washington has a 27-year record of broken promises about border security.”

Posey’s sentiments echo those of House leaders, including Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, who favors a narrower, more piecemeal approach to reform — one that doesn’t include a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants — than the approach taken by the Senate bill.

Boehner said he wants House legislation “that reflects the will of our majority and the will of the American people.” He plans to meet with House Republicans on July 10 to discuss how to proceed.

The Senate bill, passed 68-32 on Thursday, would spend more than $40 billion to build more fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border and add more than 20,000 border agents. It would revamp the nation’s visa program and beef up workplace verification to make sure jobs are held by legal residents.

It also would create a process to allow immigrants already in the country illegally to become citizens within 13 years, provided they meet certain benchmarks.

Rep. Dennis Ross, a second-term Republican from Lakeland near Tampa, said he’s open to considering changes to immigration programs, such as the guest worker program, visas and border security.

“(But) I don’t believe that we should grant amnesty in the form of citizenship as a Band-Aid to cover the issue that there are 11 million immigrants here illegally,” he said. “We are a blessed nation of opportunity, but also a nation of laws. We should always wish it to be so.”

GOP Rep. Jeff Miller, a veteran lawmaker from the Pensacola area, doesn’t like the Senate bill, either.

“The Senate-passed immigration bill has no chance of passing the House as it is written,” he said. “Rewarding individuals for breaking the law while failing to adequately address the pressing issue of border security is not the correct approach.”

Fort Myers Republican Trey Radel said he is “open” to the idea of citizenship, especially for immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children. Those “dreamers” — a reference to the DREAM Act that was proposed to help them achieve legal residency — could become citizens faster than most other immigrants under the Senate bill.

But Radel also wants security addressed before he would consider other changes.

In an open letter to conservatives last week, Rubio tried to allay their concerns. While the Senate bill is far from perfect, the senator said, the existing scenario is worse.

“We have 11 million people living in this country illegally in de facto amnesty,” he wrote. “This is the way things are now. This is the status quo. And it is a terrible mess. It is hurting our country terribly. And unless we do something about it, this administration is never going to fix it.”

The proposal that passed the Senate, he argues, “mandates the most ambitious border and interior security measures in our nation’s history.”

Posey has said he would consider allowing illegal immigrants to gain legal status only after the border is secure for at least six months.

“After Washington fulfills the promise of border security made 27 years ago, then we can consider other immigration-related issues,” he said. “Securing our borders is important for national security reasons, economic reasons, and because of drug trafficking and public safety.”

http://www.floridatoday.com/article/...al-immigration