House Votes to Block Obama’s Executive Action on Immigration

Wall Street Journal

By Laura Meckler and Kristina Peterson

January 14, 2015

House Votes to Block Obama’s Executive Action on Immigration

The House passed legislation Wednesday to nullify President Barack Obama ’s immigration policies, tying the contentious issue to a bill funding homeland security and setting up a clash with Democrats who are expected to block the measure in the Senate.

The vote was 236-191 for the funding bill after the House easily approved amendments to undo a string of Mr. Obama’s executive actions. The move gave conservatives the votes they had been demanding, but prompted backlash from some centrist Republicans who said it goes too far.

The bill would unravel Mr. Obama’s plan to give safe harbor to some four million illegal immigrants who have citizen children, and erase years of effort under the Obama administration to focus immigration enforcement more on recent border crossers, national security threats and other criminals and less on those who pose no particular threat.

It would also end a 2012 program that offers safe harbor to young people brought to the U.S. illegally as children, and some 600,000 people in the program would again become subject to deportation. But that amendment passed only narrowly, with 26 Republicans voting no, along with all 183 voting Democrats. That was an increase in GOP opposition from the 11 Republicans who opposed a similar measure last summer.

“My party needs to stop just saying what we are against and start saying what we are for when it comes to fixing our broken immigration system,” said Rep. Mike Coffman (R., Colo.), who voted against the amendment and against the final bill.

Some Republicans see political danger for the party if its only messages on immigration are about deporting people, particularly for candidates competing for the growing Hispanic vote, which will be critical in the 2016 presidential contest.

Overall, though, the party was united in its opposition to Mr. Obama’s policies.

“This executive overreach is an affront to the rule of law and to the Constitution itself,” House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) said on the floor Wednesday. The White House says Mr. Obama’s actions were well founded in law and consistent with those taken by previous presidents.

The vote sends the measure to the Senate, where it would need 60 votes to clear procedural hurdles, and where Democrats appear to have the votes needed to stop it. Even were it to reach Mr. Obama’s desk, the White House has promised to veto it.

“The pointless, political bill passed in the House today will not pass the Senate,” Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) said in a statement. Republicans, he said, “are picking an unnecessary political fight that risks shutting down the Department of Homeland Security and endangering our security.”

The underlying, $39.7 billion bill would fund the Homeland Security Department from Feb. 27, when its current funding expires, through September. If the funding were to lapse, most of the department’s workers would still have to work because they are considered essential employees, but they wouldn't be paid until an agreement was reached.

Even after the vote, some conservatives remained frustrated that GOP leaders hadn’t tried to block Mr. Obama’s executive action last month, when the full government’s funding was at stake rather than just homeland security.

“There are some real concerns we lost this in December,” said Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R., Kan.). “I don’t see a strategy to success.”

It remains unclear how Congress and the White House will agree on a bill funding Homeland Security. People in both parties have suggested it is unthinkable that homeland-security appropriations would be allowed to expire, particularly in light of the recent terrorist attacks in Paris.

At least one centrist Democrat, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, was considering an alternative approach to overhauling immigration laws, a scaled-back version of the bipartisan bill the Senate passed in 2013. It would include most of that bill’s border-security provisions, as well as additional visas for high-tech workers, according to his office. Mr. Manchin would also provide “provisional status” for illegal immigrants, with most ineligible to apply for green cards or citizenship. Aides said the expectation is that Congress will take further action to address their status at some future point.

It isn’t clear yet what Senate leaders will do if the House bill stalls in their chamber. House GOP leaders intend to wait to see how the Senate responds before making their next move, GOP aides and lawmakers said.

House and Senate Republicans planned to discuss future strategy at a retreat in Pennsylvania on Thursday. The circumstances of this week’s gathering stand in contrast to a similar event a year ago, when many Republicans said the House would act to pass an immigration overhaul.

A year ago, Mr. Boehner put forth GOP immigration principles that embraced legal status for adults in the U.S. illegally, and the chance for citizenship for people brought to the U.S. as children. But the speaker soon stepped back from those ideas, and most of the immigration legislation the House has considered has been to undo Mr. Obama’s policies.

“Wow, time flies when you’re playing politics with people’s lives,” said Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D., Ill.), who quoted from the 2013 Republican principles on the House floor.

The package approved on Wednesday would end the Obama administration’s policy of prioritizing deportation of certain illegal immigrants over others, an issue that has received less attention than the question of deferred deportations.

Supporters say this is a smart way to deploy limited enforcement resources, but some object because the priorities provide a measure of assurance that illegal immigrants who don’t fall under the priorities won’t be deported.

Under the Obama policy, top priorities include those suspected of terrorism, national security threats, gang members, those convicted of felonies or aggravated felonies, and those apprehended at the border.

At the same time, the House adopted a separate amendment that directs the administration to consider people convicted of offenses involving domestic violence, sexual abuse, child molestation or child exploitation to be top enforcement priorities. Those crimes aren’t specifically listed on the Obama priority list but would be included when they are felonies.

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