WASHINGTON - The House Judiciary Committee announced Thursday that it would introduce a series of bills beginning this week to overhaul the nation’s immigration system, a move designed to keep the committee in the middle of the debate over the issue, which is now percolating on Capitol Hill, and to press a bipartisan group in the House that has been working in private on its own broad legislation.
Rep. Robert Goodlatte, R-Va., the committee’s chairman, said the first of several proposals in the coming weeks would create a temporary guest-worker program for agriculture and require employers to use an electronic verification system to check the immigration status of employees.
The announcement came after the Senate Judiciary Committee this week held the last of three hearings on broad immigration legislation that would tighten border security and offer an eventual path to citizenship for 11 million illegal aliens already in the country.
Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., both members of the bipartisan group of eight senators who wrote the legislation, said Thursday that they were aiming to win 70 votes in the Senate and hoped to gain the backing of a majority of senators in both parties - a prospect McCain described as “very do-able.”
Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. and the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, announced Thursday that his committee would begin its markup of the immigration bill on May 9, shortly after Congress returns from itsrecess. Consideration of the legislation is expected to last through most of May.
“There’s a different mood in the Senate,” Schumer said. “I hope that our immigration bill sets the model for coming bipartisan agreements.”
Goodlatte made it clear that his committee’s intention was to jump-start the debate in the House. The bipartisan House group studying immigration, which has been meeting in secret on and off for about four years, has yet to offer its own proposal.
“At this point in time, we think we can help move the process forward by beginning to examine the legislative details of various ideas that members have brought forward,” he said.
Goodlatte’s announcement creates a sense of urgency among the House group, particularly its Democratic members, to introduce broad legislation. Many Republicans in the House prefer a piecemeal approach, similar to what Goodlatte is proposing, though Democrats fear that this approach would make it tough for them to win support for a path to legalization - a crucial part of any immigration overhaul, they say.
Goodlatte emphasized that his committee had not decided what should appear in the final legislation, and he did not dismiss the possibility of offering some kind of legal status. He said the committee would examine the Senate proposal and any proposal presented by the House group.
The bipartisan House group hopes to introduce its legislation by the end of May, aides said.
One holdup has been Republican unwillingness to accept the Senate plan for a temporary guest-worker program, which has already been endorsed by leading business and labor groups. House Republicans think the plan is too favorable toward labor, and they would prefer a higher cap on the number of visas for low-skilled workers. (The Senate plan has an annual cap of 200,000.)
The House group’s legislation will have other differences from the Senate legislation, aides said. The House bill, for instance, will probably offer a 15-year path to citizenship, rather than the 13-year path offered in the Senate plan, though both bills would allow aliens to earn green cards in 10 years.
Goodlatte pushed back against criticism that the committee was dragging out the process by proposing changes to the system one byone.
“I would point out that the House group, the bipartisan group that’s been negotiating this, has been negotiating it for about four years, so we want to see a product from that group,” he said, “but we recognize - and I’m sure they recognize - how difficult it is to work on this issue, and therefore making sure that we take our time is an important part of this process.”
Goodlatte also said Thursday that the way the U.S. grants asylum may need to be addressed after the Boston Marathon bombings.
Suspects Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev are ethnic Chechen brothers from Russia who came to the United States about a decade ago with their parents. The family was granted asylum.
“People getting asylum because they are in the minority, but engaging in aggressive tactics in their home country that may cause them to be susceptible to doing the same thing elsewhere, that obviously ought to be a part of our consideration in granting political asylum to avoid situations like Boston,” said Goodlatte.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano defended the asylum process this week in an appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee, saying it involves multiple layers of vetting.
Information for this article was contributed by Ashley Parker, Emmarie Huetteman and Sheryl Gay Stolberg of The New York Times;
and by writers from The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 2 on 04/26/2013