Conservative Immigration Bill Fails, House Will Vote on Moderate Bill on Friday
41 GOP representatives voted no on the bill.
*UPDATE: The conservative immigration bill failed to pass the House
The House began debating on the Goodlatte immigration bill, considered the more conservative one, at 12:20PM ET. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy announced that the House will vote on the compromise bill tomorrow.
It looks like House leadership will meet in the office of Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) ahead of the vote.
Chad Pergram tweeted that the House has decided to debate the farm bill between the two immigration bills, which will give House leadership time to persuade GOP members to vote for the compromise bill.
President Donald Trump said before his Cabinet meeting that he is inviting the Democratic leadership to the White House to talk immigration. He said that they’re invited to the “White House any time they want” and that “[T]his afternoon would be good” or even after the Cabinet meeting.
The Votes
1:45PM ET: Right now, the House is voting to send the conservative bill back to committee and vote on DREAM Act. If this doesn’t work, then the lawmakers will vote on the conservative bill.
1:57PM: The compromise bill vote will happen on Friday.
NEW: House GOP Majority Leader McCarthy says it has been decided that the House GOP compromise immigration bill vote has been postponed until FRIDAY to give member more time to review it
— Alex Moe (@AlexNBCNews) June 21, 2018
2:07PM ET: The House is now voting on the conservative bill.
2:13PM ET: The conservative bill has FAILED in the House. 41 GOP members voted against it.
193-231: House defeats @RepGoodlatte–@RepMcCaul immigration & border security bill. 41 Republicans joined all Democrats in voting No. pic.twitter.com/h57CzBburv
— Craig Caplan (@CraigCaplan) June 21, 2018
41 House Republicans voted No on Goodlatte-Denham immigration bill including "compromise" bill authors Curbelo & Denham and GOP Conference Chair McMorris Rodgers. https://t.co/nBgfDJQgZR pic.twitter.com/G4mTNxbF4g
— Craig Caplan (@CraigCaplan) June 21, 2018
The Bills
The House has two immigration bills on the table, one considered conservative and the other more moderate.
The moderate bill “would provide legal protections for undocumented young people known as ‘Dreamers’ while also providing $23.4 billion for a wall along the border with Mexico.” USA Today continued:
On one of the most contentious issues, the draft proposal would allow an estimated 1.8 million “Dreamers” to apply for “nonimmigrant status”– essentially a conditional legal visa – if they meet certain conditions. They must, for example, have a high school diploma or GED and must be under 36 years of age as of June 15.
Those conditional visas would be taken from new restrictions on legal immigration included in the GOP bill; the measure would nix a diversity lottery program and limit family-based immigration. Once the “Dreamers” have taken the visa slots from those two programs, they will disappear – thus reducing legal immigration.
If the “Dreamers” win that nonimmigrant status, then after six years, they can apply for a green card, which will set them on the path to eventual citizenship.
This compromise bill would also stop “separation of immigrant families seeking asylum at the border” and allow “children to stay with parents in the same detention facilities.”
The Goodlatte bill, Secure America’s Future Act, has what the White House wants and some more, according to National Review:
It abolishes the extended-family chain migration categories and the visa lottery, authorizes wall funding and extra border agents, cracks down on sanctuary cities and asylum abuse, and mandates E-Verify.
It also would essentially codify DACA for its current beneficiaries, rather than open a whole new can of worms for 2 or 3 million “DACA-eligible” people, as all other proposals would do.
Trump already supports Goodlatte’s bill.
Reactions to the Bills
The Hill reported that House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows is not optimistic about either bill:
“I’m not optimistic about the two bills that will be on the floor today,” Meadows said Thursday in an interview with Hill.TV’s “Rising.” “I think at this point the more conservative bill doesn’t get to 218. It’s still up in the air whether the more moderate bill gets to 218.”
“If I were to have to handicap it right now at this particular point this morning,” he added, “I would say no, it’s not.”
It didn’t help matters that the compromise bill had a $100 billion mistake in it. The bill gave $24.8 billion every year for the wall instead of every five years.
Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-TN) said he would not vote for the compromise because he does not approve of the “provision that allows the parents of DACA kids to be brought in at a later date.” Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-MO) did not say she would vote against it, but said Congress nees “to clarify DACA parents.”
Pelosi/Schumer letter to Trump: The administration has the authority and the resources to immediately begin the process of family reunification. Any delay in doing so is simply unacceptable. We request that the administration present its plan to Congress
— Chad Pergram (@ChadPergram) June 21, 2018
.@NancyPelosi: “It is not a compromise. It may be a compromise with the devil, but it’s not a compromise with the Democrats in terms of what they have in their bill.”
Full video here: https://t.co/PKnwkpPCFo pic.twitter.com/d6fZcuMrTY
— CSPAN (@cspan) June 21, 2018
.@SpeakerRyan: “If these bills do not pass today then we will cross that bridge when we get to it. But the last thing I want to do right now is undercut the votes that we are about to have on what I think are pretty darn good immigration measures.” https://t.co/Y4rSBy1brL pic.twitter.com/MvQXhfBwFQ
— CSPAN (@cspan) June 21, 2018
From The Hill:
Regardless whether two immigration bills pass or fail, the votes will have been a “legitimate exercise,” Speaker Paul Ryan told reporters on Thursday.
The Wisconsin Republican argued that he views the pair of votes as a success because they avert a discharge petition effort by moderate GOP insurgents and Democrats, and allow Republicans to vote on immigration legislation backed by President Trump.
The push for the petition was an “exercise in futility,” Ryan argued, because it would have handed control of the floor to Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and other Democrats.
“Our goal was to prevent a discharge petition from reaching the floor, because a discharge petition would have brought legislation to the floor that the president would have surely vetoed. It would have been an exercise in futility. …” Ryan said at his weekly press briefing.
“The bills that are coming to the floor today are bills that, if it got to his desk, [Trump] would sign into law. Therefore, it’s a legitimate exercise.”
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Comments
It DOES NOT MATTER which bill gets passed! It only matters what comes out of the Reconciliation!
And you can bet the swamp creatures are already writing the “Yank the full text out of that and substitute this” bill for the reconciliation, including amnesty, zero wall money, chain migration, unconditional immigration, etc…
Breitbart: Rep McCaul: Dems ‘Completely Interested’ in Making Border Situation a Campaign Issue, ‘No Interest’ in Working GOP Constructively
Rep McCaul: Dems ‘Completely Interested’ in Making Border Situation a Campaign Issue, ‘No Interest’ in Working GOP Constructively
Compromise with the devil maybe, not a compromise with “Democrats”? What’s the difference?
Ryan’s “moderate” bill is a sell-out of the American people. It gives the amnesty up-front, and to more than a million people more than those who registered for Obama’s DACA amnesty (and contrary to Obama’s express promises, almost none of those DACA recipients were ever screened or given background checks). It pushes border security off into the future (just like the scam 1986 amnesty law did), does not require the use of E-verify, and it also gives chain migration rights to the new amnesty recipients.
Obama justified his DACA amnesty order by saying we shouldn’t penalize “kids” who were brought to the U.S. by their parents, since the kids had no say in it. But Ryan’s bill would not only give amnesty and eventual citizenship to those illegal alien kids (and more), but it also would give amnesty and eventual citizenship to their law-breaking parents, effectively rewarding them for their choice to violate our laws.
Ryan’s bill, if passed, will guarantee that illegal immigration becomes an even bigger problem than it already is, as the next waves of illegal aliens come here looking for their reward.
Ryan’s “moderate” bill is lousy public policy, and it needs to be shut down now.
You’re right, it’s a bad bill. But have no worries – even if it passes the House, Schumer has promised to kill it in the Senate. Schumer has promised to kill ANY immigration bill in the Senate – he and the Dem leadership truly believe Open Borders is a winning issue for them in the fall elections, and he is going to block any legislation, even some that is favorable to him like the Ryan bill, because of that.
We went through all of this in the spring – nothing has changed.
Tom is of course right. They think that open borders is a winning issue for the Dems. But why? Because they think that America is full of people who hate America as much as they do.
After all, Obama won twice and he wanted to fundamentally transform America. In other words, the very foundation of this country was illegitimate. In order to fundamentally transform something, such as an old house, you tear it down and start over on a different foundation. Here we’re talking about the Constitution. So now we have a bunch of invented rights, such as a gay couple’s right to force a Christian (note how it’s never a Muslim, although there are plenty of Muslim bakers in Dearborn, MI and elsewhere who won’t bake a same sex couple a wedding cake) to bake a custom wedding cake AND decorate it with messages and symbols that violate his conscience. Which used be unconstitutional under the First Amendment’s free exercise of religion and free speech clauses. You can not compel speech, but now that we’ve been “fundamentally transformed” and we have competing, actually superseding unwritten rights, the government feels free to compel speech.
Barack Obama talked about wanting to do this for years. He described the Bill of Rights as a list of “negative” rights; a list of things that government can’t do to you. He wanted to replace it with
Sorry, gremlins.
He wanted to replace it with “positive” rights. Things the government must do for you. Like abolish Christianity because of all those inconvenient moral strictures that make Christians hallucinate they have a right to their own conscience. Oh, they’d still be able to go to church. But recall how Obama never talked about freedom of religion. He always talked about freedom of worship. In other words, people would have the right to get together and practice their primitive rituals and worthless liturgies, but once they leave that little box they only have the right to the correct opinions as determined by their betters in government.
Atheists, you may think this is a good thing, or perhaps not a good thing but at least irrelevant to your lives. And you’d be wrong. You have no more right to your own conscience than a religious person under this doctrine. And this is simply one of the enumerated rights in the First Amendment. I won’t “fisk” the entire Bill of Rights and discuss how Obama attempted to replace all the negative rights with positive rights; what the government must do for you overriding what the government can’t do to you. And the idea that the government must “do for you” is simply a smokescreen for whatever the government wishes to do for itself.
Now, if you really hate America like a leftist, you have to abolish the borders.
“This compromise bill would also stop ‘separation of immigrant families seeking asylum at the border’ and allow ‘children to stay with parents in the same detention facilities.'”
Are these fools serious? Oh, it’ll stop separation of “immigrant families.” So we’ve eliminated the concept of the illegal alien; that’s the only way these families can be immigrants. So in effect this bill if it uses that language legitimizes the illegal border crossers status in this country. But it won’t allow the children to stay with their parents in the same detention facilities. The courts have made it clear. The Democrats have made it clear. The leftists have made it clear. What they’re really opposed to is adult detention. Any detention at all for violating immigration laws. In fact, they oppose immigration law.
Immigration law means we have a right to exist as a country, and that’s really what they’re opposed to. We the people only have the right to exist as the subjects of an almighty government that is free, to paraphrase Berthold Brecht, to dissolve us and form another whenever convenient.
That, my friends, is the left’s wet dream. Why are we even debating this bill. If the Dems think open borders is a winning issue for them, I believe I have a winning issue for the right. “The Dems love open borders and unlimited immigration because they hate you, Americans.”
except according to the GOP Freedom Caucus (the Conservatives) the WAS NO “Conservative” Bill and the ‘Moderate’ Bill’s is the RINO/Democrat Bill so leftist
You are of course correct. Ryan presented the GOP caucus with a choice between horrific and calamitous.
Meadows was seen arguing with Ryan on the floor of the House. He says that some things they were promised in the “compromise” bill were either not as expected or were omitted altogether – so you can expect that the bill probably won’t pass tomorrow. Of course the Republicans will be blamed, not the Democrats who, as usual, are voting en masse against everything.
I wouldn’t be surprised if that happens. I’ve been saying for some time that if you want to bet on a sure thing, bet on Congress doing absolutely nothing at all whenever they are faced with a serious and critical issue.
What I’m hearing based on Gohmert’s words to Lou Dobbs goes something like this. Ryan said the bill would ‘address’ Trump’s Four Pillars. This isn’t the metaphorical ‘address’, like supporting or funding the principles. This is the literal ‘address’, as in, lip service saying that the Four Pillars would be a nice goal to reach someday, eventually, but really taking our time to get there.
Gohmert’s opinion is that Ryan is very good with words and that he cannot be called a liar for this. I am not sure “Clintonian master of deception” is a nicer way to put it, mind you.
Chamber of Commerce vs Us Citizens – no contest says Ryan and Schumer, the CoC wins hands down.
Ryan should have resigned the moment he said he was resigning.
Couldn’t. He still has to get more COC/Koch sponsored legislation through the House. It’s in his future contract.
Why it that only Trump has figured out that no matter what happens, Republicans will be blamed? He’s supposed to be the amateur, the rest of the crowd styles themselves the professionals.
And don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of things I don’t like about Trump. I won’t go into them now because at the moment they’re not important. Suffice to say I leave the political messiah worship (plastic fantastic dashboard Chicago Jesus, anyone?) to the leftists.
I figured this out shortly after I turned 18, went from registered Democrat to Republican, voted for Reagan.
The Republicans constantly whine, “We can’t do X or we’ll be blamed by the media.” Their strategy should be, “When we do X and are blamed by the media what is our PR strategy?”
But I’ve figured something else out, too, over the years. The GOP makes a lot of campaign promises about really, really, really wanting to do X, but they don’t actually want to do X.
Fill in the blank with whatever issue you care about.
Because they’re too busy using the media as a weapon against each other to disarm it against Republicans generally?
Look at the previous two presidential nominees. Lions against fellow Republicans, mice against Democrats. I think my guess is accurate.
Republicans are in it for the “job” (the pay and perks), and don’t really have much interest in governing it seems. The democrats are in it purely for the power, and will do anything to exert it and maintain it – the pay and perks are just benefits that come along with it. Both are more than willing to take no action on certain issues because it’s better to keep those issues alive to campaign fund-drive on.
Virtue signaling, they know Trump will not sign a bad bill, but they can claim they tried. Many worthless do nothings in congress. They are hoping and planning on some activist judge to bail them out of doing their job,.
Remember this an election year in which every member of the House is up for reelection, except for those who are retiring. So, everything that the members do is gear entirely toward reelection.
The Republicans know that the Dems will vote against any immigration bill. So, the Republicans put forth two bills. One if designed to appeal to the constituency of those members who have a very conservative, anti-Illegal immigrant base. This bill has failed. But, the member who supported it can still claim that they are tough on illegal immigration. The second bill is designed to appeal to a constituency which is composed of more moderate immigration voters or which has a significant independent or Democrat membership. This bill may or may not pass. But, even if it does, it is unlikely to pass the Senate, prior to the elections.
This is all the Congressional two-step. It is designed to look as though the members of Congress are doing something, but they really are not.
It is designed to look as though the members of Congress are doing something, but they really are not.
Unfortunately, it’s a problem inherent in representative government.
A sucessful professional politician is one who manages to get re-elected. A politician who’s out of office isn’t a politician at all, so whether he’s in or out of office is not a mere detail—it’s vital.
A good way for an officeholder to be re-elected is to make the voters think he’s useful; a man who “gets things done”. Actually getting things done is not important; only the appearance is important, because that’s where the votes are.
Given the choice of effective action nobody knows about, or well-publicized activity which amounts to nothing useful, the pro will choose the well-publicized but useless option, simply as a matter of survival. The other option doesn’t get him re-elected, so in Darwinian terms, he dies.
So it’s no surprise that we tend to get lying dirtbags in office. Their lying dirtbaggishness is a major part of what makes them electable.
The House of Lords and the Roman Senate dodged the problem of electorability by eliminating candidacies and campaigns, making membership essentially hereditary. But this introduced other problems.
For the American Republic the Revolutionary generation seems to have had something a bit different in mind; men who had established themselves in business or a profession, and who had reached a mature point at which they could let their affairs run themselves for a few years while they took a brief turn at public service. Someone like George Washington or, for that matter, Donald Trump. If they foresaw the dangers of the professional politician, they took no strong steps to prevent such parasites from taking hold.
The old “Asses and Elbows” position. Boss-man pulls onto the job and that’s all he sees. Everyone must be working. 😉
I heard that the 41 members who voted against the “conservative” bill were mostly Freedom Caucus. FC is supposed to be the most conservative part of the GOP, so if they voted against the bill how conservative could it have been?
That is interesting. Fools.
No such thing as a “Conservative” Amnesty bill.
Haven’t followed the details, but after reading the article I believe this is a no-lose for Trump and damaging to anyone who votes against either bill.
I didn’t see the list of those voting against, but it will be an albatross in the next election. Just like “recalling Obamacare”, people are ticked at the duplicity of our “representatives” and willing to extract revenge at the polls. Maybe that is what Schumer is counting on, that it will allow Dems to pick up votes because conservatives are angry at their reps. But I think that is a dangerous game for them and is likely to backfire. People want this fixed.
If you’re going to report on this, let’s see all the names and how they voted so we can hold our representatives accountable. It’s called journalism.