Kaine, Warner: keep immigration debate in the Senate

As the Senate debates a bipartisan immigration reform proposal that would eventually put 11 million undocumented immigrants on a pathway to citizenship, a House committee led by Rep. Robert W. Goodlatte, R-6th, is moving toward approving a tough enforcement-focused immigration bill.

Also Tuesday, the Congressional Budget Office said 8 million immigrants living unlawfully in the U.S. would initially gain legal status under the Senate bill, adding that the measure would cut deficits by $197 billion over 10 years and $700 billion in the following 10 years.

In the House, the Strengthen and Fortify Enforcement (SAFE) Act, sponsored by Rep. Trey Gowdy, a South Carolina Republican, would empower state and local officials to enforce federal immigration laws, make passport and visa fraud aggravated felonies subject to deportation, funnel money into building more detention centers and crack down on immigrants suspected of posing dangers.

Goodlatte, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said the bill under consideration — the first immigration bill to come to a vote in a House committee this year — “provides a robust interior enforcement strategy that will maintain the integrity of our immigration system for the long term.”

As Goodlatte gaveled the committee to order Tuesday, more than a dozen protesters who had been seated in the hearing room stood up and began clapping and chanting, “Shame, shame, shame! More of the same!” They were ushered out but their cries could still be heard in the hallway and committee proceedings were briefly interrupted.

Democrats fear that the House proposal would turn millions of undocumented immigrants into criminals while not addressing the challenge of helping them on a way to citizenship.

Goodlatte said Tuesday that the Senate package does not address border security issues enough — a problem that the House measure attempts to correct.

“It’s true that many in the House, including myself, are concerned that the Senate’s nearly 1,000-page bill repeats some of the same mistakes of the past,” Goodlatte said, referring to the last major immigration-reform bill, which passed in 1986.

The new House bill, Goodlatte said, is just one component of immigration reform. “We continue to work on the other components, such as reforming our legal immigration system and finding a solution to bring those unlawfully present in the U.S. out of the shadows and into society,” he said.

Several leading Democrats consider the House’s efforts counterproductive, fearing they might obscure the Senate debates. That the move by the House Judiciary Committee less than two weeks after the full House voted to overturn President Barack Obama’s 2012 election-year order to stop deportations of many immigrants brought here illegally as youths raises additional concerns.

On Monday, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., said the Senate immigration bill should have started in the House, because the House poses a bigger hurdle and a House vote “could have guided” the Senate’s actions. On Tuesday, Speaker John A. Boehner said he would not bring any immigration measure to the floor for a vote unless it had the support of a majority of House Republicans.

The eagerly awaited report by the CBO, Congress’ nonpartisan economic forecasting agency, said the Senate legislation would increase federal spending in the form of benefits for those gaining legal status, but those expenses would be more than offset by a rise in the labor force, increasing revenues.

Sen. Timothy M. Kaine, D-Va., disagrees with the step-by-step approach of House Republicans.

“The Senate’s comprehensive approach to immigration reform is the right one because it brings all major stakeholders together to fix our broken immigration system,” Kaine said.

“In addition, the Senate has demonstrated it can work in a bipartisan fashion on this issue and if we send a bill to the House with strong support from both parties, I believe the bill has a solid chance of passing.”

As in the House, border security is at issue in the Democratic-led Senate, where senators have been jousting over how to strengthen the provisions in the far-reaching bill being considered on the floor this week to remake the nation’s immigration laws.

In a series of votes during the day, the Senate rejected a move by Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., to require the installation of 350 miles of fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border before legalization can begin for anyone currently in the United States illegally.

Similarly, the Senate rejected a proposal by Sen. David Vitter, R-La., to prevent legalization until a biometric system is in place to track people entering or leaving the country through air, sea or land points of departure.

The Senate bill would allow tens of thousands of high- and low-skilled workers into the country, and require all employers to check their workers’ legal status. At its heart is a 13-year path to citizenship for people now in the U.S. illegally — but that is contingent on certain border security goals being met.

“There’s no question that our border would be the most secure it’s ever been as a result of this bill,” Kaine said. “It builds on the significant progress already made to secure our border in recent years with additional investments — up to $6.5 billion in upgrades, including a biometric exit data system that will be in place at the 10 largest international airports in the United States within two years and at 20 additional airports within six years,” he said.

Kaine also said that the measure would ensure that at least 90 percent of all illegal border crossings are prevented.

“The goal is to have a bipartisan product, and I think everybody agrees that this is much more likely to happen in the Senate than the House,” said Sen. Mark R. Warner, D-Va.

Warner said the larger issue relating to the failure of the 1986 reforms was that immigration legislation “has not previously tried to address the economic incentives behind illegal immigration.”

House Republicans plan to tackle immigration reform in bite-size pieces.

“We hope to get immigration reform done this year, but we are more concerned about getting it right,” said Goodlatte, who previously shied from committing to a timeline. “It’s imperative that we avoid the mistakes of the past so that we have a workable immigration system for the years to come,” he said.

On Sunday, Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who helped write the Senate bill, appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” and warned conservatives who are trying to block the measure that they will doom the party and all but guarantee a Democratic win in 2016.

But Kaine and Warner said they don’t want to see immigration reform claimed by one party for political gain in future elections.

“Comprehensive immigration reform is the right thing to do for the country, which should trump any political calculations,” Kaine said.

“With comprehensive, bipartisan legislation, we can strike a proper balance where everybody gets something and no one gets everything they want,” Warner said.

“The comprehensive and bipartisan Senate bill isn’t perfect. It’s a compromise. Democrats don’t get everything they want, and neither do Republicans,” Warner said.

###