Wall Street Journal
By Janet Hook
June 16, 2013
As the Senate moves toward passing the broadest immigration bill in a generation, the House is about to serve up the issue in small slices.
The man wielding the knife is House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R., Va.), whose panel meets Tuesday to take the House's first formal action on immigration legislation.
Mr. Goodlatte, a low-profile conservative who is new to the chairman's job this year, opposes the Senate's comprehensive bill and plans instead to advance a series of more narrowly focused immigration bills. He will begin Tuesday with votes on a get-tough enforcement measure that would turn the debate sharply to the right.
Critics worry his piecemeal approach will bury rather than breathe life into the immigration debate. But Mr. Goodlatte argues that his approach allows more careful legislating on a complicated topic.
"For far too long, the standard operating procedure in Washington has been to rush large pieces of legislation through Congress with little opportunity for elected officials and the American people to scrutinize and understand them," Mr. Goodlatte said Friday in a statement.
The Senate bill, in a single piece of legislation, aims to better secure the border, requires employers to use a federal database to ensure that workers are legal, expands guest-worker visas and provides a path to citizenship for roughly 11 million people in the U.S. illegally. It was drafted by an ad hoc, bipartisan group of eight influential senators.
In the House, the spotlight has turned to Mr. Goodlatte because a parallel bipartisan group of lawmakers has yet to produce a bill. House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio), mindful of warnings after the 2012 elections that the party's immigration stance has hurt the GOP with Latinos, wants immigration legislation to be approved by the committee by the end of June so the full House can vote by August.
Resistance in the House to a broad overhaul of immigration law was in evidence recently when it approved an amendment by Rep. Steve King (R., Iowa) designed to overturn President Barack Obama's policy of allowing many illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as children to live and work legally in the country, rather than being subject to deportation. Many conservatives oppose granting legal status to illegal immigrants, calling it a form of amnesty for lawbreakers.
Mr. Goodlatte, who, along with all but six House Republicans, supported the King amendment, has a voting record similar to his party's most vocal critics of illegal immigration. Still, advocates of an immigration-law overhaul were encouraged when Mr. Goodlatte adopted a softer tone than his predecessor as chairman, Rep. Lamar Smith (R., Texas).
He brings a practical eye to the debate because he was a practicing immigration lawyer before he was elected to the House in 1992. Mr. Goodlatte helped people from more than 70 countries immigrate legally to the U.S., according to an aide.
"He knows we cannot ignore millions of people here illegally," said Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R., Utah), a judiciary-committee member. "That doesn't mean he supports amnesty, but he understands the human face of this, because he's had those people in his office."
Mr. Goodlatte is also well-acquainted with another, emotion-laden side of the debate—the feelings of conservatives who see granting "amnesty" as a firing offense for members of Congress. There is a strong tea-party presence in Mr. Goodlatte's district in western Virginia. A primary challenge in 2012—the first of his congressional career—showed Mr. Goodlatte that he needs to keep an eye on the conservative flank of the GOP in his district.
The challenge came from a candidate allied with libertarian presidential candidate Ron Paul. Mr. Goodlatte won the primary with more than 70% of the vote. But even today, the Roanoke Tea Party website has a "Wanted" poster calling for Mr. Goodlatte to retire, criticizing him for supporting debt-limit increases and for violating his term-limits pledge to leave Congress after 12 years.
For now, local tea-party leaders say they are pleased with his handling of the immigration debate. His piecemeal strategy dovetails with the tea party's suspicion of big bills, such as Mr. Obama's health-care law and the Senate immigration bill, which started at more than 800 pages.
"The bigger the bill, the greater the mischief," said Ken Adams, a tea-party activist in Mr. Goodlatte's district who sought, and promptly was granted, a meeting with Mr. Goodlatte on immigration in May.
Mr. Goodlatte's committee ultimately could approve three or four smaller immigration bills, on matters such as agricultural workers and the E-Verify program, which businesses use to confirm that employees are legal, as well as on border security. Rep. Trey Gowdy (R., S.C.), chairman of the immigration subcommittee, said that he and Mr. Goodlatte may eventually combine their panel's individual immigration bills into one or two larger legislative packages.
Many immigration-overhaul advocates were deeply discouraged when Mr. Goodlatte chose to begin committee action with the bill to toughen immigration-law enforcement.
"The chairman has made some positive noises; he has seemed open to a more comprehensive approach," said Frank Sharry, executive director of the immigrant-advocacy group America's Voice. "Put me down as skeptical."
Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D., Ill.), a judiciary-committee member, said that earlier this year that he was encouraged by signs that Mr. Goodlatte and the speaker would back a broad immigration bill. But after the King amendment passed, Mr. Gutierrez said he believes that "Republicans are having a relapse" and a "substantial case of amnesia about the last election."
Mr. Goodlatte's role may ultimately be eclipsed if the House's bipartisan group is able, at last, to produce the broader legislation that it has been promising for weeks. Mr. Boehner has been quietly encouraging the group and could himself step in more forcefully in shaping the bill before it goes to the House floor.
A key question is whether the House bill, whether produced by the committee, the ad hoc group or the leadership, can pass the House if it includes some mechanism for giving legal status or citizenship to the roughly 11 million people in the U.S. illegally, as the Senate bill does. The House bill could be silent on the issue, and a compromise could be worked out in a House-Senate conference committee.
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