An immigration reform bill backed by conservatives went down to defeat in the House of Representatives Thursday, while GOP leaders postponed a vote on an alternative proposal.
The House voted 231-193 to reject a bill crafted by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.). Forty-one Republicans — a mix of conservatives who oppose any type of amnesty and moderates who thought it too harsh — joined 190 Democrats in defeating the legislation.
An alternative put together by House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and other GOP leaders was supposed to come up for a vote later Thursday. But the leadership pushed back a vote until Friday amid concerns that supporters did not have the votes to pass it.
The Goodlatte bill would have granted permanent legal status — but not an automatic path to citizenship — for young adult illegal immigrants brought to America as children and who enrolled in former President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
It also included $25 billion for a border wall, along with additional immigration judges and enforcement officers. The bill also would have made dramatic changes to the legal immigration system, ending the diversity visa lottery, and moving from a system based on family ties to one valuing skills and education.
The bill would have required businesses to use the E-Verify system to determine the legal status of new hires. And it would cut off funds for so-called sanctuary jurisdictions.
“It has a very good proposal with regard to the DACA recipients,” Goodlatte said during the debate. “They get a legal status — permanently. For the rest of their lives.”
Goodlatte said the bill also would address a backlog of 600,000 asylum cases.
“I think that it is a good first step,” he said.
The debate featured emotional pleas on both sides.
Rep. Norma Torres (D-Calif.) choked up when she recalled a Guatemalan couple who sent their young daughter in 1970 to live in the United States.
“That young girl was me. I was welcomed here. In a loving home,” she said. “I was not put in a freezing cell. My parents felt they had no choice. My mother died a couple of years later.”
But Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas) countered with a personal story of his own, of a constituent who fought for America in Iraq. The man’s wife died of cancer, and then he suffered the horror of his daughter dying after a car crash involving an illegal immigrant.
“Because you did not do your job, I am now separated from my daughter in perpetuity.”
“Because you did not do your job, I am now separated from my daughter in perpetuity,” Burgess said the man told him.
Democrats heaped scorn on the bill.
“This is a scandal, Mr. Speaker,” Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) said. “Republicans should hide their head in shame.” Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) said the bill is “about making America white again.”
Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) said it was “an act of extortion” that cannot be tolerated. “This legislation is nothing more than a wish list of the far-Right, anti-immigrant fringe,” he said. Added Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.): “This war on families must stop.”
And House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) made clear that Democrats oppose both bills.
“Today, we are considering two Republican bills that insult our nation’s values and tarnish our heritage,” she said, later adding. “It replaces one form of child abuse with another. And it brazenly violates children’s human rights.”
But Rep. Rául Labrador (R-Idaho) said amnesty must be accompanied by border security.
Related: Here’s the Key to Making Trump’s Immigration Executive Order Work
“Enforcement remains the key to our system,” he said. “Without enforcement, our laws have little effect.”
Ryan, in a news conference before the vote, did not sound confident.
“Even if we get something out of here, you need nine Democrats [in the Senate] to stop trying to stop things and voting with us, and I don’t see that happening,” he said.
President Donald Trump, at a Cabinet meeting, blasted Democrats for creating a “massive human smuggling industry” in Mexico and Central America.
“They’re extremist, open-border Democrats,” he said.
PoliZette senior writer Brendan Kirby can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter.
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