The Senate’s failure to pass an immigration reform proposal last week casts a spotlight on the House, where Speaker Paul Ryan has pledged to take up legislation next month.
But the House poses an even tougher hurdle for immigration reform.
While the House can pass legislation with a simple majority and does not require the more difficult 60-vote threshold needed in the Senate, lower chamber lawmakers have historically failed to find consensus on the issue. This time, it’s shaping up to be just as difficult.
“I think it’s hard because it’s such a fractious issue in both chambers,” Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., said. “In some ways, it’s easier for us if they [the Senate] take the lead.”
Future Senate action, however, is now uncertain. The Senate tried but failed to pass either of two major immigration reform proposals introduced last week, and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has not promised any additional floor time to debate the issue.
Senate Democrats blocked a bill that incorporated President Trump’s immigration framework, which would provide a pathway to citizenship for 1.8 million illegal immigrants who came here as children, appropriate $25 billion for border security, limit chain migration, and end the visa lottery system.
Republican lawmakers blocked a mostly-Democrat bill that would have provided the same citizenship and border security funding provisions. But the legislation, backed by eight Republicans, didn’t scale back chain migration and would have prioritized illegal immigrants for deportation only if they have a criminal background or arrived after 2017.
In the House, conservative Republicans are pushing the GOP leadership to try to pass a bill sponsored by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va.
The Goodlatte bill incorporates the Trump framework but adds many other conservative immigration reform provisions and does not provide a clear pathway to citizenship.
Among the extras in the Goodlatte plan is mandatory E-Verify for employers and a 25 percent cut in legal immigration. It also creates an immigrant guest worker program.
The 400-page Goodlatte plan has significant GOP support but not enough to pass, according to lawmakers familiar with the whip count.
Many Republicans have problems with provisions dealing with immigrant farm workers, while others don’t like the immigration reduction numbers and mandatory E-Verify, which are also opposed by the business community.
Some Republicans are seeking a more moderate approach.
Rep. Jeff Denham, R-Calif., said he is seeking a “narrow” bill that provides a pathway to citizenship for 1.8 million Dreamers, possibly coupled with provisions to bolster border security.
“We can have other amendments, and certainly, border security should be part of any bill that is moving forward,” Denham said.
But he rejected “one party trying to push a solution.”
Instead, he argued, the House should bring multiple proposals to the floor to see which garners the most support.
“I am supportive of a step-by-step, very narrow approach that this House has continued to talk about,” Denham said.
Cole agreed that the House tends to stumble on major comprehensive reform bills.
And the divide on immigration runs deep in the Republican Party.
The GOP-led chamber wouldn’t even consider a comprehensive immigration reform bill the Senate passed in 2013.
“We don’t do complicated things really well around here,” Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, told the Washington Examiner. “This is a classic, keep-it-simple-stupid kind of institution, and we shouldn’t try to get overly ambitious because I think we are less likely to succeed that way.”
Majority Whip Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., says he is working to win enough votes to pass the Goodlatte measure.
Conservatives have threatened to upend the GOP leadership if they don’t at least give the Goodlatte measure a fair shot at passing. They want Republican leaders to put the same effort into passing the Goodlatte measure as they did to pass tax reform, which took months of negotiations with rank-and-file lawmakers.
“I can say it is the defining moment for this speaker,” Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, said at a forum sponsored by the Heritage Foundation last week. “If he gets it wrong, it will have consequences for him, but it will also have consequences for the rest of the Republican Party.”
Republican lawmakers appear more likely to back the Trump framework, which is far simpler than the Goodlatte bill, but leaves out a lot of conservative wish-list items, such as E-Verify.
Simpson is not backing the Goodlatte plan because many in the farming industry are opposed to the guest worker provisions.
“It’s problematic,” Simpson said. “Potato growers are opposed to it, and the dairy industry is opposed to it.”
Simpson said Trump’s proposal is far simpler and easier for him to back.
“The president’s framework in general is what I would support,” he said.
