House Republicans have dodged a floor debate on immigration reform for years, but the GOP is planning a vote next week on language that will pit the House directly against President Obama’s 2014 executive action on immigration.
The House plans to vote Thursday on a resolution that will authorize Speaker Paul Ryan to file an amicus brief with the Supreme Court on behalf of Texas, which is suing to stop Obama’s recent action to defer the deportation of millions of illegal immigrants.
The measure is likely to pass, but not before Democrats and Republicans take to the floor for a rare debate on the future of immigration reform, which has become a divisive issue between the parties as well as within the GOP.
“Speaker Ryan is bringing up for a vote a one-sided Republican resolution that does not speak for Democrats, and will only feed the mean-spirited, anti-immigrant obsession of his party’s most extreme forces,” said Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. “The last thing our nation needs is for leaders in Congress to misuse the people’s House to divide our country and perpetuate a broken immigration system that tears apart families.”
House Republicans have resisted efforts to bring immigration reform to the floor for debate and votes because it divides their own party. Many conservatives staunchly oppose a path to legalization for the millions of people now here illegally, but other Republicans are more supportive of such a path, as well as expanding work visas, which conservatives argue take jobs away from Americans and lower wages.
Immigration has also become a top issue in the Republican presidential primary contest, bolstering candidates like Donald Trump, who wants to build a wall on the Mexican border, and hurting Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who once co-authored an immigration bill that provided a pathway to citizenship.
But Republicans mostly agree when it comes to Obama’s executive actions on immigration. The GOP views Obama’s move as an overreach of his legal authority and a violation of the Constitution, which grants Congress the sole authority to enact legislation.
In the case of U.S. v. Texas, the Obama administration is appealing a lower court decision that halted Obama’s 2014 action on immigration. The president had authorized deferring the deportation of the parents of children who are either lawful residents or were born in the United States.
Texas and 25 states sued the Obama administration to block the action, and the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas issued an injunction to prevent it from being implemented. The injunction has survived higher court challenges and now sits before the U.S. Supreme Court, which added an additional question: Did the action violate the president’s duties to “take care that the law is faithfully executed?”
Ryan wants a House to argue before the court that it did. But it requires a House vote to authorize him to file the amicus brief on behalf of Texas and to allow the House to participate in arguments before the court.
“This is a question that the House is uniquely suited to answer,” an aide to Ryan said. “The president is not entitled to write immigration law, Congress is.”
It would be an unprecedented move. While lawmakers have filed amicus arguments with the Supreme Court in the past, they have never done so on behalf of the House.
Attorney Paul Clement will represent the House pro bono, a Ryan aide said. Clement has advised “that it is best for the House to speak as a whole on this matter.”
Democrats won’t be part of it, however, and most will vote against the House resolution.
And while their minority status prevents Democrats from passing their own resolution, they filed a separate amicus brief on behalf of Democratic lawmakers in the House and Senate, siding with the Obama administration.
“We are confident the Supreme Court will recognize the legality and necessity of the President’s actions to help bring our immigration system back into line with the values and needs of our country,” Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said in a statement.
