House Republicans have never been able to resolve their internal disagreements over how to reform the nation’s immigration system.
So Republican leaders will let the rank-and-file choose legislation they like by putting a series of bills on the floor this summer that would tackle immigration reform, but in several pieces.
As soon as this week, the House could vote on a bill that would provide a pathway to citizenship for 1.8 million Dreamers who entered the United States illegally as children. The measure would include an end to the diversity visa lottery system, new border security funding and a reduction in chain migration of immigrant family members.
The legislation incorporates the “four pillars” of reform President Trump outlined in his January State of the Union address and is therefore expected to win his approval.
“This can make law,” House Speaker Paul Ryan said last week.
[Related: Paul Ryan’s immigration bill gains traction ahead of House votes]
But the bill leaves out two immigration reform issues critical to many lawmakers: Mandatory E-verify, which would require employers to ensure hires are legal immigrants; and a guest worker program for the illegal immigrant farm and dairy worker community.
The E-Verify and guest worker program have divided Republicans and would likely sink the Dreamers bill if they are included in it, so Ryan promised lawmakers separate votes on E-Verify and a guest worker program in July.
“That is one of the considerations,” said House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va.
Goodlatte is the author of yet another bill that GOP leaders plan to put on the floor either this week or later in June.
This measure is considered more conservative than the bill Ryan is authoring. It would provide renewable legal status only for the 700,000 Dreamers who signed up for the Obama-era program allowing them to apply for work permits. And the pathway to citizenship would be more difficult than the plan Ryan is likely to propose, which would provide all 1.8 million Dreamers special visas they could use to eventually apply for citizenship.
The Goodlatte bill would also more strictly limit chain migration, and more significantly reduce overall immigration numbers. It would also withhold federal funding for so-called sanctuary cities, and tighten the asylum program, which in recent months has grown exponentially as thousands of illegal immigrants use it as a reason to gain entry into the United States.
Goodlatte’s proposal includes mandatory E-Verify and a guest worker program, but he may remove those provisions because it will cost GOP votes.
“That’s being discussed right now,” Goodlatte told the Washington Examiner.
It’s not clear whether any of the GOP legislation will pass. Ryan is banking on his own bill winning the votes but won’t promise it will make it out of the House.
“We won’t guarantee passage,” Ryan said last week. “Remember, when I took this job three years ago, I said, ‘We’ll bring stuff to the floor that may or may not pass.’ That’s how Congress works sometimes. But we want to give members their ability to express their positions.”
The chamber under both parties has long avoided considering legislation to deal with any of the nation’s illegal immigrant population.
The issue was finally forced on the leadership by moderate Republicans, who in a rare move paired with Democrats to sign a discharge petition that could have forced votes on a series of immigration reform bills that mostly rejected conservative reform.
Now the House is poised to vote on GOP bills.
“We said from the beginning we want the House to debate immigration reform in a serious, meaningful way,” said Rep. Carlos Curbelo, R-Fla., an author of the discharge petition. “And it looks like that is happening for the first time in nearly a decade.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who this month panned taking up a new immigration reform bill after the Senate rejected four proposals in March, said he will “consider” holding another vote, if the House can pass it.
