WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama on Friday urged lawmakers to change the nation’s immigration policy, including creating a pathway to legal residency for millions of foreigners who have entered the country illegally.
But after a flurry of interest at the end of January, a congressional push for changes to immigration law has come to a standstill, at least publicly. The five Republican members of Arkansas’ congressional delegation said they don’t expect Congress to pass any major immigration legislation this year.
Speaking at a meeting of House Democrats in Cambridge, Mass., Obama asked lawmakers Friday to make the issue a priority and said Republicans are “scared about the political blow back” of making big policy changes in an election year.
“When it comes to immigration reform we have to remind ourselves that there are people behind the statistics, that there are lives that are being impacted, that punting or pushing things off for a year, another two years, another three years, it hurts people,” he said.
According to the Pew Research Hispanic Trends Project, there were an estimated 11.7 million people in the United States illegally in 2013, down from a peak of12.2 million in 2007. The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that roughly 55,000 of those people live in Arkansas.
Republicans, who control the House, have said they want to address separate aspects of immigration policy, focusing on border security first. The Democrat-controlled Senate has already passed an overarching bill that changes several immigration laws.
At the end of January, House Republican leaders circulated a list of “Immigration Reform Standards” that focused on enforcement and security, verifying that all employees are legal U.S. residents and preventing unauthorized border crossings. It also called for creating a legal-residency program, but not citizenship, that would be open to those willing to learn to speak English, pay fines and back-taxes, and pass background checks.
But House Republicans balked at it immediately, saying the House speaker had sprung it on them. U.S. Rep. Tim Griffin, R-Ark., called the proposal “dead on arrival” because House members weren’t asked to weigh in on it.
“To put those out and then just expect House members to say ‘Great, you did our work for us,’ that’s just not how the House works,” Griffin said in an interview. “The way this has been handled has been poor.”
House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, quickly backtracked, saying he knew that reaching a consensus would be difficult and that Republicans don’t think that the president will enforce laws they pass.
“It’s going to be difficult to move any immigration legislation until that changes,” he said.
Griffin agreed, saying the president has bypassed Congress.
“It doesn’t do any good passing new laws if the president is not enforcing the laws we already have on the books,” Griffin said. “I see the problem, and he’s down at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue” in the White House.
Critics have pointed to the Obama administration’s policy that deporting convicted criminals takes priority over ejecting illegal aliens who don’t have criminal records. They have also criticized his decision not to deport children brought into the country illegally who have no criminal record and are attending school. Others are upset about the reduction in a federal program that allowed state and local officials to make immigration arrests.
U.S. Rep. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., also said he doesn’t expect any immigration law changes this year because he doesn’t trust the president to enforce them.
“I think the best thing to do is wait until the next year at least when the Republicans control the Senate,” he said. Cotton is a candidate for the U.S. Senate this year.
If Republicans controlled the House and Senate, they could make it harder for the president to bypass Congress on immigration, Cotton said.
Meanwhile, border security must increase, he said.
“If we build an actual fence, you can’t bypass a fence,” Cotton said.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection spent $2.4 billion to build a 651-mile-long fence at the border between 2006 and 2012. A Senate bill included plans for another 700 miles. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the U.S.-Mexico border is 1,933 miles long.
Cotton is challenging U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., in this year’s November election. Pryor’s seat has been targeted as one of six that Republicans hope to win to gain control of the Senate.
Cotton said the Senate immigration bill is unacceptable.
“Its basic framework is amnesty now, enforcement later,” he said.
Pryor disagreed, saying the bill does more to protect the country’s borders than Congress has done in the past.
“It shows that if you work together and work across the aisle, you can get even the big and complicated things done,” he said. “The bill’s not perfect, but this is a bipartisan immigration bill. I hope the House won’t let it die on the vine.”
The Senate legislation also requires illegal aliens to register with the federal government to begin an eight-year process to become citizens or risk being deported. It also would track people whose visas expire and create a temporary agricultural worker program.
The bill passed in the Senate 68-32, with support from 54 Democrats and 14 Republicans.
Pryor said the House should do its job and pass the Senate immigration bill, regardless of this year’s election.
“Stop making excuses about election years. If you don’t think the immigration system is broken, just say so,” Pryor said. “If we let politics be our primary consideration, we’re never going to get anything done.”
U.S. Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark., said House Republican leaders have to weigh whether it is worth pushing an issue that divides the caucus in an election year. He said Republican leaders don’t want to undermine their chances of gaining control the Senate and increasing their majority in the House.
“I think there is a hesitancy here as we approach the 2014 elections, there’s a hesitancy on the part of leadership to want to engage in full-scale major reforms of any type that could divide our party as it exists today,” Womack said.“I think it’s a very, very delicate balance that the speaker has to achieve so as not to diminish our chances.”
Womack said it’s up to voters to decide if waiting to change immigration policy is appropriate.
“In Washington it’s going to be a decision that is made primarily out of what’s politically acceptable, and then politically do-able as most things are. And then it’s going to up to the electorate to decide whether or not that’s acceptable,” he said.
U.S. Sen. John Boozman, R-Ark., said immigration policy “is something that the country is pretty evenly divided over,” so he doesn’t expect big changes this year.
Local and national organizations have said they support changing the nation’s immigration law.
The Arkansas State Chamber of Commerce, the Arkansas Farm Bureau and a group of religious leaders from Arkansas have held multiple events calling for change. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has also lobbied Congress for comprehensive changes.
Over the summer, Wal-Mart praised passage of the Senate bill and urged the House to follow suit. On its website, Tyson Foods calls a comprehensive overhaul of immigration policy a “priority” and said it should include a path to citizenship and border security.
In 2013, the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville’s nonpartisan Arkansas Poll found that 59 percent of respondents said the federal government should allow illegal aliens currently in the United States to become citizens if they meet criteria like learning English and paying back-taxes.
The poll also found that 21 percent of respondents said the government should deport all illegal aliens, 9 percent said the aliens should be able to stay and work temporarily, 2 percent said they should become permanent residents with no other requirements and 5 percent did not answer the question.
The poll, which included responses from 800 Arkansans from Oct. 10-17, has a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points.
But an unofficial poll by an Arkansas lawmaker has different results.
U.S. Rep. Rick Crawford, R-Ark., said the number of constituents contacting his office spiked about the time Boehner unveiled his proposal. Crawford’s Chief of Staff Jonah Shumate said 158 people have contacted the office about immigration since the State of the Union address. Only two people said they wanted changes in existing immigration law.
Even though Boehner’s proposal didn’t include citizenship provisions, Crawford said, the issue is consistently one of the top things constituents call about.
“They just don’t see a reason to get in a hurry on anything but border security,” Crawford said. “We need to focus on enforcing the laws that we already have on the books.”
Front Section, Pages 1 on 02/16/2014