Optimism in the U.S. Senate is running high for the passage of a comprehensive immigration overhaul package, despite indications of roadblocks in the House. In an appearance Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) predicted as many as 70 senators will vote for the measure when the bill comes to the Senate floor on June 10.
“We are moving forward because we believe in a bipartisan way this is so vital for America, and we’ll have a good bill,” Schumer said.
The bill, which was co-authored by the bipartisan coalition of senators known as the “Gang of Eight,” will face difficulties passing the Republican-controlled House, however, where lawmakers are attempting to formulate their own solution to addressing the legality of the more than 11 million undocumented immigrants that live in the United States.
“That Senate bill is not going to move in the House,” said Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) on CNN’s “State of the Union”.
Republicans are skeptical
The Senate immigration bill would create a 13-year path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, increase entrance quotas for low- and high-skilled workers, and improve border controls and workplace enforcement mechanisms such E-Verify. It passed the Senate Judiciary Committee 13-5 last month, with three Republicans joining the Democratic majority.
The House, facing their own priorities, are unlikely to accept the Senate’s compromise version.
“We think it’s better to do it with a step-by-step approach,” said House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) on “Fox News Sunday.” “We’ll continue down that path, but the final outcome in terms of the form of the legislation is not yet known.”
Many of the “Gang of Eight” feel that the Republicans will be most challenged by a perceived lack of border security provisions in the proposed bill and the granting of government benefits and tax breaks for immigrants who obtain legal status.
“There is a lot of dissatisfaction among Republicans that the border stuff is not tough enough, that there are no real triggers,” Tamar Jacoby, president of ImmigrationWorks USA, told USA Today. “There certainly are going to be people who are pushing for more teeth, different standards and meaningful triggers.”
Unfair and unrealistic expectations?
The Senate bill would require a 90 percent effectiveness rate for security along the entire Southwest border — a benchmark many experts feel is impossible. According to an investigation by the Center for Investigative Reporting, the current rate falls far below that mark.
“The border crossers were spotted with a new, all-seeing radar system developed for use in the Afghanistan War and patrolling above the U.S.-Mexico border in parts of Arizona since March 2012. The system can reveal every man, woman and child under its gaze from a height of about 25,000 feet,” the center reported. “Between October and December, records show, the remotely operated aircraft detected 7,333 border crossers during its Arizona missions. Border Patrol agents, however, reported 410 apprehensions during that time, according to an internal agency report.”
As a point of comparison, the border between East and West Germany had a 95 percent efficiency in the 1970s, according to a report from the Council on Foreign Relations. It was achieved by a double-walled border with trained snipers, barbed wire and anti-personnel mines between the walls.
The Senate bill would also deny any newly legalized immigrants access to means-tested social benefits such as Medicaid, Medicare and welfare. Many Republicans, however, dislike the idea of granting temporary legal status before all border requirements are met, while others wish to deny access to benefits even after the undocumented immigrants become lawful permanent residents.
This may create a situation where the government can deny emergency relief to lawful residents or aid to the hungry and sick.
“We already have a path to legality in this bill that is quite narrow, quite hard and quite long,” said Clarissa Martinez, director of civic engagement and immigration at the National Council of La Raza. “We are going to be vigilant about opposing any amendments that intend to make that path even harder because that might make citizenship unattainable.”
“We just went through this horrific tornado in Oklahoma,” Martinez said. “What happens if your house has been leveled, your job has been obliterated, one of your family members ends up in the hospital as the result of a tragic event? People need to be able to survive while they work and wait to become citizens.”
Political realities
The Republicans cannot afford to appear apathetic on this issue. The 2012 elections showed the Republicans losing congressional races and the presidential contest because an overwhelming majority of Hispanic voters supported Democrats. With the president winning re-election with 71 percent of the Hispanic vote, 73 percent of the Asian vote and an astounding 95 percent of the Black vote, it is clear that any future roads to power for the GOP must include non-White voters.
House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) “is in a box. There are about 60 or 70 of his people who are against any immigration reform. But at the same time, he knows that the Republican Party will be consigned to a minority party for a generation if they’re anti-immigration,” Schumer said.
“We are hard at work on this problem. We have a broken immigration system in the country, it needs to be fixed, our legal immigration, our enforcement and figuring out the appropriate legal status for people who are not lawfully present in the United States all need to be addressed,” Goodlatte said.
The ultimate success of the bill may lie with the amendments. Republicans have warned that liberal amendments — such as proposals to preserve family reunification visas or allow spouses of LGBT permanent residents into the country — may create a “poison pill” that would make the bill unpalatable to conservatives.
“I think the bill is in serious trouble,” said Rosemary Jenks, government relations director for NumbersUSA, which opposes increased immigration and is currently running television ads in opposition to the bill. “I don’t think they have the 60 votes (needed to fend off a conservative filibuster). They are not going to get all 55 Democrats, especially the ones from red states. And I don’t see them getting enough Republicans to make it to 60.”
However, many of the bill’s supporters feel optimistic because anti-immigrant sentiment has been all but absent from the public debate — a stark contrast to the environment lawmakers experienced the last time an immigration overhaul was attempted.
“This is totally different,” said Jeff Hauser, a spokesman for the AFL-CIO, which is part of the coalition supporting the bill. “It’s not just that Latino and pro-immigration groups are stronger, there’s just nothing going on on the other side. We’re not seeing the big anti-immigration protests that we saw before.”
“The American people don’t believe the status quo is working,” said Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), the president pro tempore. “If senators are serious about fixing the problem, this bill will pass.”