Thread: For Republicans, immigration remains disagreement among friends

For Republicans, immigration remains disagreement among friends

BY DAVID M. DRUCKER |
JANUARY 16, 2015 | 1:45 PM




GOP leaders House Speaker John Boehner, left, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell meet...

HERSHEY, Pa. — Better acquainted but still divided, House and Senate Republicans ended a 48-hour policy retreat Friday without consensus on immigration or homeland security funding.

Republicans aim to translate their first full control of Congress in eight years into policy wins and political advancement in 2016. On fiscal and national security matters, the GOP looks primed to develop a governing vision that most in their ranks can get behind. But immigration and how best to confront President Obama’s “executive amnesty” still burn, threatening to stall funding for the Department of Homeland Security ahead of a Feb. 27 deadline.

“It’s time for the Senate to deal with the bill that we sent them,” said Rep. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, the House majority’s chief deputy whip. “We’ve given them plenty of time.”

The House on Wednesday approved sweeping legislation to fully fund DHS while rolling back Obama’s executive action to legalize and grant work permits to millions of illegal immigrants. The bill also would reverse previous Obama orders, including to halt deportations of illegal immigrants brought to the U.S. as children by their parents. The tough language has rendered the package all but dead in the Senate, foiled by a combination of Democratic opposition and Republican division.

But GOP leaders in the Senate aren’t about to let the expected Democratic-led filibuster stop them from funding homeland security. Delays in resourcing the agency, on the heels of the Paris terrorist attacks, would disrupt their determination to prove their party can govern responsibly. Getting 60 votes, however, means stripping most of the GOP proposals from the House bill that target executive legalization, putting the two chambers on a collision course.

“There [isn’t] going to be any more drama associated with shutting down, for example, the Department of Homeland Security. That’s off the table,” Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn of Texas told reporters here on Thursday, during a joint news conference with House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California.

House and Senate Republicans sounded conciliatory when asked about the pressure the other chamber faces in moving DHS appropriations. In the House, conservatives wanting to push back against Obama hold sway, and there is relative unanimity on the issue in any event. In the Senate, the 54-member Republican conference is more divided, with GOP leaders having to contend with the 60-vote requirement to pass almost anything.

But pressed repeatedly during their two-day gathering at the Hershey Lodge resort in central Pennsylvania — the party's first cross-chamber retreat in a decade — it was clear House and Senate Republicans don’t have a plan for reconciling their differences or passing DHS appropriations that don’t need Democratic votes to clear the House. The Paris attacks have further complicated GOP plans to leverage homeland security funding to force Obama’s hand. Republicans are hesitant to defund the agency given elevated fears of a domestic terrorist strike.

McCarthy and McHenry both said a formal House-Senate conference committee to meld competing bills is an option. But some GOP aides quashed the idea, saying that would require the Senate to move quickly, an improbable scenario if a full amendment process is permitted. Senate Republicans are saying little about how they plan to proceed. In the House, immigration hawks are taking a wait-and-see approach.

“I’m well aware of their challenge to get 60 votes; it would require some bipartisan appeal and there may have to be some changes [to the House bill] to achieve that,” Rep. Cynthia Lummis said. The Wyoming Republican explained that she could live with a bill that permitted deferred action for children to continue if the measure overturns executive legalization.

Despite continued differences about immigration, some House Republicans said they detected more unanimity among members than a year ago.

During last year’s retreat in Cambridge, Md., House Speaker John Boehner announced “principles” for comprehensive reform, but the uproar it caused among immigration hawks forced him to shelve the issue. On Thursday, the breakout session on immigration, which focused narrowly on border security, featured none of the bitter divisiveness that characterized last year’s discussion, according to a House Republican in attendance at both.

In fact, many freshman members who spoke during the open mic period of the immigration session told leadership they’re interested in tackling all parts of reform, not just border security, the House Republican said. They join many veteran members in the House and Senate who favor comprehensive immigration reform, as well as others who favor overhauling all aspects of the legal immigration system.

How to address the 11 million illegal immigrants living in the United States continues to be the major sticking point that divides Republicans on the issue. Although the hawks who oppose “amnesty” under any circumstances often dominate the debate and define the GOP’s image as it relates to immigration, there is a considerable faction that is prepared to cast votes for reform that addresses it, depending on the details and sequencing of the legislation.

Sen. Dean Heller described the House bill to fund DHS and roll back Obama’s executive order as another example of partisan immigration that just says “no” to reform without offering another path. Heller wants to pass a broad immigration overhaul, similar to what the Senate approved in June 2013.

“What I want is an answer,” the Nevada Republican said. “I’d like to see a comprehensive piece of legislation that’s voted out bipartisan. If they do that then we have something in the Senate we can work with.”

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/fo...rticle/2558788

The two men in the above picture were complicit in allowing 11 million to come in and not stopping it sooner - they need to fix it and it doesn't mean 11 million new socialist Democrats on welfare.

Sen. Dean Heller described the House bill to fund DHS and roll back Obama’s executive order as another example of partisan immigration that just says “no” to reform without offering another path. Heller wants to pass a broad immigration overhaul, similar to what the Senate approved in June 2013.

That's right. No means No, whether you're raping a woman or an entire nation.