Thread: GOP pressing immigrant issue

GOP pressing immigrant issue
House Republicans' tactic: Use Dems' votes against them

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepubli ... gress.html

Mike Madden
Republic Washington Bureau
Oct. 10, 2007
mike.madden@arizonarepublic.com



WASHINGTON - If you're not sure what illegal immigration has to do with union elections, federal agriculture spending or affordable-housing subsidies, you must not be a Republican strategist.

Seeking an early edge for next year's elections, House Republicans have forced several immigration votes on seemingly unrelated legislation since Democrats took control in January.

Republicans want to keep forcing Democrats to take votes that could be seen as favoring illegal immigrants. Party leaders say they will keep finding ways to relate nearly everything the House does this year back to immigration, no matter how big of a stretch. advertisement

The hope is that a pro-immigrant voting record could hurt vulnerable freshman candidates, including Arizona's Gabrielle Giffords and Harry Mitchell.

"Many votes on this issue will have one purpose and one purpose only: to get political adversaries on the record for the purposes of a future campaign commercial," said David Wasserman, who analyzes House races for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report in Washington.

Republicans plan to use the voting histories of their Democratic opponents to claim they aren't serious about fighting illegal immigration, Wasserman said.

They think the strategy will work even though many Republican immigration hard-liners lost elections in 2006.


GOP maneuvering


The GOP strategy capitalizes on one of the few parliamentary tools available to the minority party.

It involves calling for bills to be sent back to the committees that wrote them with instructions to change specific language just before the House votes on final passage of the legislation.

So far, the GOP has filed more than 50 "motions to recommit" on subjects ranging from background checks for teachers to small-business tax cuts. Some issues the GOP has forced votes on:


• Whether unions should be required to verify that members are in the country legally before allowing them to vote on labor representation, as part of an underlying bill that aimed to make it easier for unions to organize workplaces. The vote failed.


• Whether people seeking federal housing aid should be required to prove that they and their families are U.S. citizens or legal residents, as part of a bill designed to help homeowners facing mortgage crunches.

The vote was one of the GOP's few victories. Republicans also forced a similar but unsuccessful vote on whether local public-housing agencies should be required to check the legal status of people and families living in Section 8 subsidized housing.


• Whether immigrants, both legal and illegal, should be eligible for health-care aid through a children's health program up for renewal.

The vote failed, though Democrats later agreed to limit immigrants' eligibility for the program.

Republicans have lost more of the votes than they've won, including one controversial vote in early August when a total of eight members from both parties apparently switched their votes on an agriculture-spending bill after the gavel fell.

The motion was defeated by four votes after it first appeared to pass by three.

In that case, the Republican motion would have blocked any money in the bill from being spent to employ illegal immigrants or give aid to immigrants who weren't eligible. Current law already prevents that, so the GOP motion would have had a mostly symbolic effect.


Victory - win or lose

In some cases, a few Democrats have split from their party to vote with the GOP, and Republicans have blasted those Democrats who didn't vote their way.

Both Mitchell and Giffords have mostly voted with their party, though Mitchell was involved in the August controversy.

"We're just using every opportunity we're afforded to affect the underlying legislation and to force Democrats to take the tough votes they've been avoiding all year," said Brian Kennedy, a spokesman for House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio.

Republicans see a victory whether they win or lose the votes.

If they win, they change the underlying legislation to be more in line with their principles. If they lose, they get an issue they can later use against Democrats.

But the Democrats targeted by the strategy say it's deliberately misleading to voters. Some GOP lawmakers vote for both the Republican motions and the underlying bill, indicating they don't actually oppose the versions Democrats have brought to the floor.


'Political games'


"It's nothing but a bunch of political games they're playing, and they're trying to catch people," said Mitchell, who was one of the lawmakers who switched his vote in August. He said he originally voted for the GOP motion because he opposes giving benefits to illegal immigrants but said he voted no in the end because the motion would have doomed the underlying bill if Republicans won.

"Border security and illegal immigration - these are very serious issues, and I don't think they're treating them that way," Mitchell said.

Latino activists note that the GOP motions mostly serve to underscore current law, which already denies benefits to immigrants who aren't living here legally.

Few of them would have much effect on illegal immigrants, though some would force U.S. citizens and legal residents to show identification that they may not easily be able to provide.

"It does create the impression that immigration is the only thing that Republicans want to talk about," said Cecelia Muñoz, vice president for advocacy at the National Council of La Raza, the largest Latino civil-rights group in the country. "It allows them to play into the erroneous belief that undocumented immigrants are accessing these programs."

The pressure from Republicans also helped persuade Democrats to drop even legal immigrant children from legislation to renew the State Children's Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP, though that bill's ultimate fate is uncertain after President Bush's veto.

The Congressional Hispanic Caucus is pushing Democratic leaders and lawmakers to stand firm against the GOP strategy. But even some of the caucus' members acknowledged that the Republican pressure could prove tough to resist in the long run.

"I understand the sense of self-protection," said Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., a member of the Hispanic Caucus. "I don't like it, but I understand it."

Originally Posted by Mike Madden

Republicans have lost more of the votes than they've won, including one controversial vote in early August when a total of eight members from both parties apparently switched their votes on an agriculture-spending bill after the gavel fell.

No, Mr. Mike Madden, only three Democrats switched their votes after the gavel fell. The others switched their votes BEFORE the gavel fell.

This demonstrated the death of the U.S. Congress. The entire Republican side of the aisle left the chamber in protest. They should have set up their own House of Representatives in protest against such banana republic trickery. They now have no voice. The Democrats reopened the voting and changed the vote after the Republicans won the vote fair and square. They even turned off the C-Span cameras and erased the voting computer so there would be no record. That is not controversial; that is crooked. It is FRAUD.

I have always been of the mind-set that those elected officials who performed honorably and with scruples deserved to be re-elected. It is so hard to admire anyone in Congress at this point that I am coming around to the notion that we should vote every incumbent out and start all over. I don't see how an entire congress of rookies could do worse than this bunch. We have lost the respect of the world.

It would take six years to unseat every incumbent; perhaps after voting out the incumbents in 08' and 10' there would be more respect of the American people.