Washington Times
By Stephen Dinan
May 5, 2014
House
Speaker John A. Boehner has emerged as the key figure of immigration
reform legislation this year, and he has sent dramatically mixed signals
about whether Congress
will approve a bill.
At
home in Ohio last month, he seemed to mock his fellow House Republicans
by telling a local Rotary Club that they think immigration reform is
too politically difficult.
But returning to Washington last week, Mr. Boehner said the problem
wasn’t his troops, but rather a trust deficit with President Obama.
Advocates
and opponents of immigration reform now say they don’t know where the
House speaker stands on the issue as time runs short before November
elections.
“He
has been very consistent with his inconsistencies on immigration, so
nobody knows what to expect or what to believe on this topic,” said Rep.
Steve King, an Iowa Republican
who has long opposed granting legal status to illegal immigrants.
He said talk of legalization is encouraging more illegal immigrants to try to enter the U.S.
Mr.
Boehner replaces the president as the key figure on immigration reform.
Mr. Obama long pledged to tackle the issue during his first year in the
White House, and his
political stock among Hispanics sank when he failed to follow through.
After
the president helped shepherd a bipartisan deal through the Senate last
year, chiefly by staying out of negotiations, attention shifted to the
House — and to Mr.
Boehner.
Unlike many others in his party, the Ohio Republican seems to want to pass a legalization bill.
Two
days after Mr. Obama won re-election in 2012, Mr. Boehner announced
that a comprehensive immigration deal would be a top bipartisan priority
for Republicans looking
to find areas of agreement with the president.
“This
issue has been around far too long and while I believe it’s important
for us to secure our borders and to enforce our laws, I think a
comprehensive approach is long
overdue, and I’m confident that the president, myself, others, can find
the common ground to take care of this issue once and for all,” he told
ABC News.
Eighteen
months later, Mr. Boehner is trapped between that vow and the reality
of a Republican Party bitterly divided on the issue. Many rank-and-file
Republicans hope
to push aside the issue in the run-up to the midterm congressional
elections.
Those political calculations could be partly why Mr. Boehner has sent conflicting signals.
The
Wall Street Journal reported that Mr. Boehner told a group of donors he
was “hellbent” on immigration reform this year, but late last month
told Rotary members that
his own troops didn’t have the political courage to take on the issue.
After
returning to Washington, Mr. Boehner said he was kidding. He said the
real problem was that Republicans, having seen the president carve up
his own health care law
with unilateral exemptions and delays, didn’t trust Mr. Obama to
enforce parts of an immigration law.
“The
biggest impediment we have in moving immigration reform is the American
people don’t trust the president to enforce or implement the law that
we may or may not pass,”
Mr. Boehner told reporters.
Republicans
who oppose legalization say they are worried that Mr. Boehner will try
to slip a bill through the House, even if it’s during a lame-duck
session after congressional
elections. Immigration advocates say they are worried the speaker will
bow to political pressure and shelve the issue without testing the level
of support.
Tamar
Jacoby, president of ImmigrationWorks USA, said she takes Mr. Boehner
at his word: He is hellbent on legislation but leads a caucus with
wildly divergent views.
Still, she said, the Republican Party has undergone a major shift over the past decade that Mr. Boehner is trying to nurture.
“Leadership
has to do a combination of gauging that appetite and also press that
appetite, to move it,” Ms. Jacoby said. “That’s what he’s trying to do.
He can’t be way
out ahead of them, but he can be encouraging.”
She
said signs of Mr. Boehner’s commitment are apparent. Late last year, he
hired Becky Tallent, who was a top immigration adviser to Sen. John
McCain, Arizona Republican
and a longtime advocate of legalization.
Then
early this year, Mr. Boehner released a set of principles laying out a
vision for immigration reform that included legalizing illegal
immigrants, though it didn’t
offer a special pathway to citizenship.
Rep.
Luis V. Gutierrez, an Illinois Democrat who has been fighting for years
for a legalization bill, said he trusts Mr. Boehner’s remarks to his
home-state Rotary Club
more than his rhetoric in Washington.
“I
will always believe a man who’s home, in familiar, comfortable, safe
surroundings,” said Mr. Gutierrez. “It demonstrates a priority that
exists within the Republican
leadership. They really want to get this done.”
Mr.
Boehner has said he will move legislation only in pieces. He has
rejected the Senate’s approach, which combined legalization, stiffer
enforcement and a rewrite of
the legal immigration system into one massive bill.
Mr.
Boehner also has said he will not violate the “Hastert rule,” named for
former House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, who refused to bring up bills
that didn’t have at least
a majority of Republican lawmakers on board.
Mr. Boehner has broken that rule but said he will adhere to it on immigration.
If he holds firm to the Hastert rule, opponents say, no immigration bill will be passed.
Yet they fear Mr. Boehner will try to orchestrate some votes by attaching immigration provisions to other bills.
“At
this point, I don’t think it actually happens but I am completely
convinced they are looking for and creating vehicles,” said Mr. King.
“I’m completely convinced of
that.”
One
option would be to add to the defense policy bill a legalization
provision for young illegal immigrants who agree to join the military.
Democrats have personally challenged Mr. Boehner on the issue.
“It’s
time for John — he’s a good man, John Boehner — to stand up and other
Republicans to stand up,” Vice President Joseph R. Biden said at a Cinco
de Mayo celebration
Monday. “It’s time for him to stand up, stand up and not let the
minority — I think it’s a minority — of the Republican Party in the
House keep us from moving in a way that will change the circumstances
for millions and millions of lives.”
Mr. Boehner’s voting record on immigration puts him with the more liberal wing of the Republican Party.
He
was one of just 17 Republicans to vote against a 2005 bill that would
have imposed stiffer penalties against illegal immigrants and those who
aid them.
At
the time, Mr. Boehner said he objected to E-Verify, the national
electronic system to check whether workers are in the country legally.
E-Verify is voluntary, and Mr.
Boehner said he felt mandatory use would be too burdensome for
businesses.
Two years ago, advocates of an immigration crackdown accused Mr. Boehner of blocking a vote on a stand-alone E-Verify bill.
A spokesman for Mr. Boehner now says the speaker would support some form of electronic verification.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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