Thread: Hearings on immigration to be held in border states

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Hearings on immigration to be held in border states
By Nicole Gaouette

WASHINGTON — Starting with a hearing in San Diego today, House members are launching a summer-long sparring match over how best to untangle and reorder the nation's complex thicket of immigration laws.

Alongside that debate, Democrats and Republicans will wage a second struggle: to see which party can best wring a political advantage from the hearings as the November elections draw closer.

The San Diego hearing will provide Republicans with a stage to highlight the dangers of cross-border smuggling of people and radiological materials. In doing so, they will try to argue that the Senate immigration bill would not provide adequate protection against either threat.

Meanwhile, in Philadelphia, Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., will counter the House inquiry by hosting his own hearing — also today — to defend the broad nature of the Senate's bipartisan immigration bill.

Congressional hearings are usually held to explore an issue and search for solutions. House Republicans have been frank that their hearings, which will span this month and next, will be used as a negotiating tool with two goals: to highlight what they see as flaws in the Senate-passed immigration bill and to build public support for their own enforcement-only legislation.

"Pointing out what I would describe as the inadequacies in the ... bill will help strengthen our hand as we move toward a compromise with the Senate," said House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio.

Democrats dismissed the House hearings as political theater aimed at rallying core GOP voters with biased witness lists and loaded topic headings. Even so, the minority party is just as enthusiastic to start them.

In San Diego and the three or four other hearings to follow, Democrats plan to ask why Republicans are spending the summer talking about immigration instead of working on it.

And Democrats say that the hearings are the perfect opportunity to point out that if the border is porous, if agents are underfunded and if workplace immigration law is rarely enforced, much of that has happened under six years of Republican rule.

"If congressional Republicans want to make immigration the centerpiece of their 2006 campaign, I've got three words for them: Make our day," said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.


Democrats in Congress — and President Bush — largely support the Senate bill, which includes enforcement measures along with a guest-worker program and a way for most of the country's illegal immigrants to attain citizenship.

The House bill, closely identified with congressional Republicans, focuses on enforcement, including a 700-mile wall along the southern border and provisions that would make illegal presence in the United States a felony.

Until the hearings are complete, negotiations to reconcile the two bills will not begin, though House and Senate leaders are expected to confer throughout the summer. As they do, the House will hold hearings in California, Texas and Arizona to examine border vulnerabilities; the use of English as the official U.S. language; enforcement of current immigration law; and the impact of illegal immigration on local, state and federal governments.

Specter will match those hearings at least once, "to develop a broader, factual, evidentiary record on the need for the comprehensive bill, which is challenged by quite a number of House members," he said.

Copyright © 2006 The Seattle Times Company

Originally Posted by curiouspat

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003105150_immig05.html

Hearings on immigration to be held in border states
By Nicole Gaouette

WASHINGTON — Starting with a hearing in San Diego today, House members are launching a summer-long sparring match over how best to untangle and reorder the nation's complex thicket of immigration laws.

Alongside that debate, Democrats and Republicans will wage a second struggle: to see which party can best wring a political advantage from the hearings as the November elections draw closer.

The San Diego hearing will provide Republicans with a stage to highlight the dangers of cross-border smuggling of people and radiological materials. In doing so, they will try to argue that the Senate immigration bill would not provide adequate protection against either threat.

Meanwhile, in Philadelphia, Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., will counter the House inquiry by hosting his own hearing — also today — to defend the broad nature of the Senate's bipartisan immigration bill.

Congressional hearings are usually held to explore an issue and search for solutions. House Republicans have been frank that their hearings, which will span this month and next, will be used as a negotiating tool with two goals: to highlight what they see as flaws in the Senate-passed immigration bill and to build public support for their own enforcement-only legislation.

"Pointing out what I would describe as the inadequacies in the ... bill will help strengthen our hand as we move toward a compromise with the Senate," said House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio.

Democrats dismissed the House hearings as political theater aimed at rallying core GOP voters with biased witness lists and loaded topic headings. Even so, the minority party is just as enthusiastic to start them.

In San Diego and the three or four other hearings to follow, Democrats plan to ask why Republicans are spending the summer talking about immigration instead of working on it.

And Democrats say that the hearings are the perfect opportunity to point out that if the border is porous, if agents are underfunded and if workplace immigration law is rarely enforced, much of that has happened under six years of Republican rule.

"If congressional Republicans want to make immigration the centerpiece of their 2006 campaign, I've got three words for them: Make our day," said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.


Democrats in Congress — and President Bush — largely support the Senate bill, which includes enforcement measures along with a guest-worker program and a way for most of the country's illegal immigrants to attain citizenship.

The House bill, closely identified with congressional Republicans, focuses on enforcement, including a 700-mile wall along the southern border and provisions that would make illegal presence in the United States a felony.

Until the hearings are complete, negotiations to reconcile the two bills will not begin, though House and Senate leaders are expected to confer throughout the summer. As they do, the House will hold hearings in California, Texas and Arizona to examine border vulnerabilities; the use of English as the official U.S. language; enforcement of current immigration law; and the impact of illegal immigration on local, state and federal governments.

Specter will match those hearings at least once, "to develop a broader, factual, evidentiary record on the need for the comprehensive bill, which is challenged by quite a number of House members," he said.

Copyright © 2006 The Seattle Times Company

San Diego hearing on CSPAN now. Is there an ongoing thread for this somewhere that I cannot find it?

I checked pre-posting, and couldn't find one.