New York Times
By Jonathan Weisman
August 12, 2014
WASHINGTON
— Late last month, as members of Congress were poised to leave for
their summer recess, the House Republicans’ top policy experts found
themselves in a barren
conference room in the Capitol’s basement, negotiating with the party’s
most ardent opponents of immigration overhaul.
As
senior members of the Judiciary Committee looked on, the opponents —
Representatives Raúl R. Labrador of Idaho, Louie Gohmert of Texas, Steve
King of Iowa and Mo Brooks
of Alabama — reshaped two bills to address the rush of unaccompanied
children trying to enter the country illegally. Representatives Michele
Bachmann, Republican of Minnesota, was were there, too, and she and Mr.
King later took to Twitter to post photos of
themselves approving the final language.
For
the Obama administration, which is considering carrying out broad
immigration policy changes by executive decree, the end of the
legislative session was potent evidence
that Congress could not be a partner on the pressing, delicate policy
decisions to come. A legislative year in which Speaker John A. Boehner
of Ohio publicly set out to marginalize the more vocal right-wing
members of his conference ended with them emboldened,
and with new leaders ready to bring the right back into the fold.
“This
was one of the most remarkable experiences I’ve had in my eight years
in Congress,” Mrs. Bachmann said. “We were able to achieve unity across
the conference in what
is likely to be the most consequential issue of this time:
immigration.”
For party elders pressing for conciliation to attract Hispanic and immigrant votes, that unity has different meaning.
“When
you put Raúl Labrador, Steve King and Michele Bachmann together writing
an immigration bill, there’s damage done, no question,” said Carlos
Gutierrez, a commerce
secretary under George W. Bush who led the failed war room in 2007
trying to get a comprehensive overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws
passed.
The
Republican Party pumped tens of millions of dollars into defeating Tea
Party candidates in the midterm primary season, exerted pressure to cut
off funding to conservative
Tea Party-affiliated political action committees and even turned to
Democrats to pass crucial laws and neutralize conservative rebels. Mr.
Boehner said he went along with a government shutdown in October to show
his fractious conference the political cost
of intransigence.
Then,
with just hours remaining in the summer legislative session, the rebels
stormed back — and on the issue that Republican elders believe they
have wrought the most
political damage.
That
has given the Obama administration new ammunition as it presses toward
executive actions that Republicans say would precipitate a
constitutional crisis and amount
to abuse of presidential power. It also points to a new reality for
Republican leaders, who brought in a southern conservative,
Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, in the wake of the Tea
Party’s stunning defeat of the House majority leader, Eric Cantor
of Virginia.
“If
they continue with this sort of approach, we’re going to have a much
more successful conference and a much more successful legislative
record,” Mr. Labrador said.
“We didn’t go to Congress to be told what we needed to do. We went to
Congress because we thought we could contribute.”
Five
months after Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky vowed to crush the Tea
Party insurgency, the political balance in the Republican civil war has
tipped. A primary
season that once promised to be bloody saw only three Republican
incumbents defeated. No Republican senator lost, and no problematic
conservative was nominated for the fall campaign.
But
on Capitol Hill, the Tea Party wing has continued to drive the party’s
legislative agenda. Last winter, as House Republican leaders were
drafting their “principles”
for immigration overhaul, they largely disregarded the opponents of any
form of legal status for immigrants in the country illegally,
dismissing them as a loud but small minority. When that “minority”
vocally opposed the principles, Mr. Boehner put the legislative
effort in cold storage rather than highlight the divisions in his
conference — even as he mocked House Republicans who feared moving
forward with immigration legislation.
Then
last month, as Mr. Scalise was preparing to assume the No. 3 post of
House majority whip, the new leader called Mr. Labrador, an immigration
lawyer before he was
elected in the wave of 2010.
“He said, ‘I understand you’re an expert; I really need your help,' ” Mr. Labrador said.
With
Democrats united in opposition and Republicans divided, Republican
leaders dropped plans to pass a stripped-down border-control spending
bill. But most House Republicans
did not want to leave Washington without addressing the crisis at the
border. During a boisterous, closed-door meeting, mainstream Republicans
vented their anger at immigration hard-liners, accusing them of
scuttling the leadership’s bills just to claim a
scalp.
In a surprise move, Mr. Boehner turned to the hard-liners he had sidelined.
“Those
us of us who believed in border security were by and large cast aside,”
Mr. Brooks said. “Funny how things can change real quickly when the
only way you can pass
legislation is to amend it our way. I hope House leadership will
consider our various opinions to a greater degree than they have in the
past.”
The
changes opponents sought were subtle: clearer language showing that the
bill was raising the bar on granting asylum hearings to unaccompanied
children at the border
and a more explicit bill phasing out Mr. Obama’s executive order
granting legal status to some illegal immigrants brought to the country
as children, an order known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA.
Regardless,
Mr. Gutierrez said, political damage was done. Complexities of
immigration law that slip by most American news media remain front and
center on Spanish television,
where news figures such as Jorge Ramos advocate immigration overhaul
positions, he said. And little-known lawmakers like Mr. King and Mr.
Brooks are not so obscure among Latinos.
Just
days after helping write the House’s only immigration policy bill of
the year, Mr. Brooks made waves again when he spoke of a “war on whites
that’s being launched
by the Democratic Party” to the conservative radio show host Laura
Ingraham. Mr. King was caught on tape grabbing the arm of a young
immigrant who grew up in Arizona and was granted legal status by the
president’s order. “You’re very good at English, you know
what I’m saying?” he told the graduate of Arizona State University.
Mr.
Gutierrez said: “We have destroyed tens of thousands of young lives,
people who don’t speak Spanish, who have lived their whole lives here,
who want to be productive
members of society, and now Steve King is rewriting DACA? I just think
that is a real shame.”
Those
involved in the fight say its outcome could be a sign of things to
come, on fights brewing over raising the federal borrowing limit,
funding the government beyond
Sept. 30, and staving off extinction for the Export-Import Bank, which
underwrites private foreign sales and expires at the end of next month.
“Before
now, our leadership was looking at what can pass in the Senate,” Mr.
Labrador said. “That’s not my concern. I want the most conservative
piece of legislation that
can pass the House.”
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
No comments:
Post a Comment