Shenanigans In The House

Serious immigration legislation is in the air. Rep Shuler's (D- NC) enforcement-only bill has attracted a fair number of supporters, and the rumor is that the House Republicans will try to force through a discharge petition necessitating a vote on the bill. While we are skeptical that a discharge petition has much chance of success, the House Democratic leadership is apparently not so sanguine (for info on discharge petitions, see here). The House Hispanic Caucus has prepared a plan to meet the antis head on if they force a vote on the Shuler Bill.

The plan begins with the proposition that any serious discussion of immigration on the Hill will definitely harm Republican presidential nominee McCain. If he supports the "pros", the anti immigration fanatics in the Republican party will not support him in the general election; if he supports the "antis", it will weaken his appeal to the independents for the general election. Second, should a vote on the Shuler bill come about, the House Hispanic caucus would seek to attach numerous benefit amendments to it - there is every likelihood that some of these amendments will succeed, a raising of the H cap, for example. Hopefully, so the thinking among the strategists among the House Democrats goes, the success of a few amendments will be a "poison-pill" guaranteeing the defeat of the over-all measure since the antis are not in a mood to make any deal trading enforcement with benefits at this time. Ironically, the antis in the House may be forced to vote against the amended Shuler bill, thus positioning the Democrats as the real pro-enforcement party.

Our take is that once started down the Hill (pun intended), the momentum of an immigration bill would be hard to stop, and we might end up with something along the lines of the Kennedy-Kyl compromise of last spring, but without the point system which doomed it. To the surprise of many, Comprehensive Immigration Reform appears far from dead. And once again, it’s the antis who deserve the credit for bringing benefits to the fore.

We welcome readers to share their opinion and ideas with us by writing to editor@ilw.com.


http://www.ilw.com/immigdaily/#comment
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------