House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) urged his colleagues Wednesday to reject a legislative effort to bypass the lower chamber’s Republican leadership and force a vote on immigration amnesty.
Supporting the discharge petition, Goodlatte said on “The Laura Ingraham Show,” would put Democrats in charge.
“The discharge petition is not the right way to go about doing this, because you could end up with a very unbalanced result that puts the floor of the House of Representatives in the control of the minority party, which suddenly becomes the majority party because they then get a rule that allows them to put their bills on the floor the way they want them,” he said.
Rep. Erik Paulson (R-Minn.) on Wednesday became the 21st Republican to sign the petition to force a vote on a bill that would give amnesty to young adult illegal immigrants whose parents brought them to the United States as children under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. That leaves the discharge petition with 204 votes, 14 shy of the 218 that are needed. Assuming every Democrat signs on, the bid needs only six more Republicans.
Goodlatte, who is retiring at the end of the year, has his own immigration bill. Unlike the approach pushed by Democrats, however, his initiative would apply to a smaller number of illegal immigrants and would stop short of granting eventual citizenship.
The Goodlatte bill also includes a host of measures to beef up border security and eliminate the ability of legal immigrants to sponsor extended family members for admission to the United States.
The congressman has said he is willing to compromise on the details of his proposal, the Securing America’s Future Act, which currently has 96 co-sponsors.
The Virginia Republican said the bill would do something for people who enrolled in the quasi-amnesty program created by the-President Barack Obama’s administration “but also make sure that our government has tools to get gang members out of country — not only arrest them, not only prosecute them, but when you’re done with them, make sure they’re out of the country.”
House leaders, who frantically have been trying to stave off a discharge petition, have said they would allow a vote on Goodlatte’s bill the week of June 21.
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“But we have to make sure we are working hard to get members of the House to support it so that it will pass,” he said. “It is not good enough to just bring it up and lose, because that just keeps this process going.”
Goodlatte said his bill closes loopholes that allow migrants to abuse the asylum system and that complicate efforts to deport Central American minors who arrive at the border.
“This president really wants to do that, but he needs these tools,” he said.
PoliZette senior writer Brendan Kirby can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter.
(photo credit, homepage image: Bob Goodlatte, CC BY-SA 2.0, by Gage Skidmore; photo credit, article image: Bob Goodlatte, CC BY-SA 2.0, by Gage Skidmore)
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