Speaker Paul Ryan’s immigration bill is likely to fail when it gets a vote this week, Rep. Mark Meadows predicted Monday.
“I would think fail right now,” Meadows said on Fox News when asked if it would pass Tuesday.
But Meadows said if that happens, House Republicans would quickly call up a more narrow bill aimed at ensuring illegal immigrant families are not separated at the border, a practice that has drawn criticism from both parties.
“Ultimately, if we do not succeed on Tuesday evening, Cathy McMorris Rodgers [R-Wash.] has given some real thoughtful insight in terms of how we keep those families together,” he said. “And so I would think that if it doesn’t pass on Tuesday night, you will see a followup piece of legislation within days.”
The bill being put together by Ryan, R-Wis., includes language to stop family separation at the border. But it also includes billions of dollars in funding for President Trump’s border wall, a path to citizenship for Dreamers, and other language.
Conservatives like Meadows don’t like language in the Ryan bill allowing naturalized citizens to sponsor their families for citizenship, which they say preserves a major element of chain migration that they are trying to eliminate. But Democrats also don’t like it, so even if it passes, it’s not expected to move in the Senate.
Meadows indicated conservatives would vote against Ryan’s bill even though it’s aimed at reaching a compromise between conservative and moderate Republicans.
The House last week rejected a more conservative bill that would help a more limited group of “Dreamers” — those who participated in former President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
[Also read: These are the 41 Republicans who killed the Goodlatte immigration reform bill]
