National Journal:
By Elahe Izadi
April 3, 2014
House
Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte warned that unilateral
executive action on immigration enforcement by the Obama administration
will make it even harder
for comprehensive immigration reform to pass Congress.
"When
the president takes action unilaterally in areas that far stretch what
the law intended ..., that builds mistrust. Will the president execute
the new laws if we
agree to them for immigration reform, for example?" the Virginia
Republican said Thursday at a National Journal and Atlantic Media event
underwritten by the National Association of Broadcasters. "So the push
by some to have the president act unilaterally in
areas because they're frustrated and tired of waiting for the Congress
to act is actually very counterproductive to having legislation done in
certain areas."
The
Obama administration is currently considering potential executive
action to further curb deportations. For months, advocates have been
pressuring the White House to
halt deportations of undocumented immigrants. In 2012, the
administration enacted Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a program
that delays deportation proceedings for certain young people, or
"dreamers."
"He's
attempting to rewrite laws to suit what he perceives to be demands from
certain groups. That's a mistake," Goodlatte said. "He should keep
putting the pressure on
the Congress to act, and the public should as well, and not create a
release, a safety valve, by doing something unilaterally that then
causes to make it even harder to do the full panoply of things that need
to be done in immigration reform."
During
his 2014 State of the Union address, Obama said he will use his
executive powers to act when Congress has failed to do so. One of the
chief proponents of further
executive action on deportations, Democratic Rep. Luis Gutierrez of
Illinois, warned on the House floor this week that if the House doesn't
pass immigration reform by July, Obama will take such action.
Goodlatte
said immigration laws "need to be reviewed and changed today," but that
the pressure created by enforcing the current laws is what will push
Congress to act.
The
House Republican leadership unveiled a set of immigration reform
principles earlier this year. Goodlatte said much of the objection in
the conference wasn't to the
principles but to the timing, and that many House Republicans didn't
trust the president. That's a point that Democrats on the Hill have
criticized as an excuse to not pass reform this year.
The
House Judiciary Committee has approved four immigration-related bills,
but it's unclear when the full House will ever take any of them up. In
response to a question
at Thursday's event from a self-identified undocumented teenager,
Goodlatte said he did not support "a special pathway to citizenship" for
the undocumented.
"What
I have focused on is an appropriate legal status for people. It's
especially true for a young person like this young lady who was brought
here illegally by her parents—really
she knows the United States as her country, and I think that needs to
be addressed," Goodlatte said. But, he added, he didn't want to
encourage families to illegally bring young children, via a dangerous
journey, to the United States.
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