Paul Ryan's immigration bill gains traction ahead of House votes
A bill put together by House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., that he hopes will be a compromise on immigration reform for both moderates and conservative Republicans appears to have won approval of key negotiators. Reps. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., and Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said they back the Ryan plan, even though they have authored a more conservative immigration reform proposal that House lawmakers are supposed to vote on this month. The approval of Goodlatte and McCaul could help bring in support for the Ryan compromise plan from a faction of conservatives who will be needed to help pass the bill. While the legislation is not scheduled yet for a vote this week, it is expected on the floor for consideration in the coming days.
President Trump, who said he backs either the Ryan bill or the Goodlatte/McCaul measure, is expected to urge House Republicans to pass either bill Tuesday afternoon when he makes a rare visit to the Capitol. The Ryan bill is considered a compromise measure that includes aspects of the more conservative Goodlatte measures and a bill authored by moderate Republicans, who had in recent weeks threatened to use a discharge petition to force a floor vote on legislation to protect Dreamers from deportation.
Goodlatte said he’d back either his own bill or Ryan’s compromise. “I obviously like the bill that I’ve introduced.” Goodlatte, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, said on Fox News. "But we’ve also worked very collaboratively with the leadership, and with people who support the discharge petition, and people who do not support it all across the spectrum. And we have reached a consensus bill which we provided text language that we’re now circulating. I will be supporting both of them.” Goodlatte has acknowledged his own measure lacked the votes to pass, leaving the Ryan bill as the sole Republican option with any chance of becoming law.
The Ryan legislation includes four immigration reform requirements outlined by President Trump in January. That includes providing a special pathway to citizenship for 1.8 million Dreamers who came here as children, a reduction in chain migration, an end to the visa lottery system, and money for a wall along the southern border. The Goodlatte/McCaul measure provides a more difficult pathway to citizenship and only for the approximately 800,000 people now enrolled in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program put in place by President Barack Obama. Goodlatte’s bill would end chain migration, the visa lottery system, and would authorize border wall funding.
Two outside groups who favor reduced immigration rates are critical of the Ryan plan, arguing that it amounts to amnesty for those who came to the country illegally, continues chain migration, and does not include a mandate for companies to use E-Verify, which some immigration reform advocates say is needed to curb illegal immigration. E-Verify is a system that ensures new hires are in the country legally. Ryan has promised a vote on E-Verify in July and has also pledged consideration of a bill to create a program for immigrant agriculture workers.
The upcoming debate over immigration comes as the GOP faces backlash over the Trump administration’s handling of children brought into the country illegally at the southern border. Republicans included a provision in the Ryan compromise bill that would allow parents and children to remain together at detention centers, which is currently prohibited and has resulted in border officials taking children from detained parents. “We fix it in this bill,” Rep Jeff Denham, R-Calif., a key moderate negotiator and author of the discharge petition, told CNN. “We want to keep parents with their children.”
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/congress/paul-ryans-immigration-bill-gains-traction-ahead-of-house-votes