WASHINGTON - The focus of hotly contested immigration legislation swung Friday from the Senate to the House, where conservative Republicans hold power, there is no bipartisan template to serve as a starting point and the two parties stress widely different priorities.
“It’s a very long and winding road to immigration reform,” said Rep. Tom Cole, an Oklahoma Republican who said it could be late this year or perhaps early in 2014 before the outcome is known. His own constituents are “very skeptical, mostly opposed,” he said.
Advocates of the Senate’s approach sought to rally support for its promise of citizenship for those who have lived in the United States unlawfully, a key provision alongside steps to reduce future illegal immigration.
“The Republican Party still doesn’t understand the depth … of this movement and just how much the American people want comprehensive immigration reform,” Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., said Friday. “We need to make sure they come to this understanding.”
Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., said Friday that it was possible the House could push through a broad bill.
“You’re going to see ups and downs. You’re going to see ugly things. You’re going to see things that we don’t like,” he said on Bloomberg Television’s Political Capital with Al Hunt, airing this weekend. Ultimately, “in order to pass legislation, I think there’d have to be something similar to what we’ve been working on.”
But Rep. Matt Salmon, R-Ariz., said in an interview that any bill that results incitizenship was a nonstarter. He called the approach “patently unfair” to those trying to “do it the legal way.”
Within hours after the Democratic-controlled Senate approved its bill Thursday on a 68-32 vote, President Barack Obama telephoned with congratulations for several members of the bipartisan group of eight senators who negotiated an early draft of the bill that passed.
Traveling in Africa, he also called House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California from Africa, urging them to pass an immigration bill.
The House Republican rank and file is scheduled to hold a private meeting on the issue shortly after returning from a July 4 vacation, and Boehner has said previously he hopes legislation on immigration can be passed by the end of July. Aides also said it was possible the matter wouldn’t go to the floor until the leadership had successfully resurrected a farm bill that was defeated last week.
In contrast to the all-inone approach favored by the Senate, the House Judiciary Committee has approved a series of single-issue bills in recent days, none including a path to citizenship that Obama and Democrats have set as a top priority.
One, harshly condemned by Democrats, would provide for a crackdown on people living in the United States illegally. Another would set up a temporary program for farmworkers to come to the United States, but without the opportunity for citizenship the Senate-passed measure includes.
A third proposal, which drew several Democratic votes, would require establishment of a mandatory program within two years for companies to verify the legal status of their workers. The Senate bill calls for a four-year phasein, although supporters of the legislation have also signaled they are agreeable to tighter requirements. A fourth increases the number of visas for highly-skilled workers.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., criticized the approach followed so far by House Republicans.
“We have taken up a series of small-bore partisan bills that are in some cases bizarre,” she said at a panel discussion hosted by Bloomberg Government and the National Restaurant Association. “We have not touched the whole issue of how you get 11 million people right with the law.”
Also appearing on the panel, Diaz-Balart said the House must find a solution for the estimated 11 million people now living in the United States unlawfully. “Ignoring that reality does not make it go away,” he said.
Lofgren and Diaz-Balart are part of a bipartisan group that has tried unsuccessfully so far to produce legislation roughly comparable to the one drafted in the Senate.
In their discussions to date, the lawmakers have agreed to a pathway to citizenship over 15 years, two years longer than the Senate legislation provides. Their efforts at an overall compromise have stumbled over details of a guest worker program and other matters.
The situation was far different in the Senate, where the eight senators drafted legislation, shepherded it through the Senate Judiciary Committee and then helped negotiate tough border-security requirements that helped swell Republican support.
The bill passed by the Senate would devote $46 billion to border-security improvements, including calling for a doubling of the border patrol stationed on the U.S.-Mexico border and the completion of 700 miles of fencing. No person currently in the United States illegally could qualify for a permanent-resident green card until those border enhancements and others were in place.
A White House official Friday expressed confidence that immigration legislation can get through the House before the end of the year, saying that backing from business groups, religious leaders, labor and technology companies willpressure the Republican majority to take action.
“The reason this is going to happen is because there is so much support all over the country,” said White House domestic policy adviser Cecilia Munoz. “The country is for this and I think ultimately the House of Representatives will be, too.”
The National Immigration Forum has worked with Southern Baptists and other large evangelical denominations to coordinate prayer campaigns and run pro-overhaul spots on Christian radio stations in states, particularly in the South.
“In 2007, we weren’t even on the radar,” said the Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, the president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, a national evangelical group. Rodriguez said he had been on the road continuously, addressing primarily non-Hispanic Christian conferences to spread the message on the overhaul.
In 2007, an immigration overhaul by President George W. Bush did not even reach a vote in the Senate.
Business groups are also pledging to stay in the fray.
“What will shock a lot of people in the House is the level of interest and intensity of the business community compared to 2007,” said Scott Corley, the executive director of Compete America, which represents tech companies that are pressing for an increase in visas for skilled immigrants. “High-skilled industry is going to be very vocal in a way theyhave never seen before.”
In 2007, Silicon Valley companies were barely involved, and after a bruising and finally fruitless fight with labor unions, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce lost much of its will. This year, the Senate bill includes a compromise accord that the chamber and the AFL-CIO worked out to bring in low-wage migrant workers in the future, as well as provisions for high-skilled immigrants.
Information for this article was contributed by David Espo, Eric Werner, Luis Alonso Lugo, Donna Cassata and Jim Kuhnhenn of The Associated Press; by Julia Preston of The New York Times; and by Roxana Tiron, Lisa Lerer and Peter Cook of Bloomberg News.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 06/29/2013