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As Congress Approaches August Recess, Immigration Debate Remains Hot

The fate of immigration reform lies solely in the House of Representatives as lawmakers debate if or how to move forward on changes to the country’s unwieldy immigration system.

House Speaker John Boehner was hopeful to pass some type of legislation before September, but has refused to take up the Senate compromise bill as a starting point.

Despite the refusal, the concept of immigration reform is far from dead. An opinion piece from the  Los Angeles Timessays ideas to overhaul the system are alive and well in the House but Republican leadership is unlikely to pass the 1,200 page Senate bill.

Big is bad in Washington these days, especially among Republicans. Lawmakers want to move carefully. They want to break things into bite-sized pieces. And on a controversial issue like immigration reform, they don't want to find unpleasant surprises tucked away in the corner of bills they otherwise support. But that doesn't mean House Republicans aren't prepared to address the issues in the Senate bill. On the contrary. House committees — Judiciary and Homeland Security — have already approved targeted measures dealing with border security, E-Verify, interior enforcement, highly skilled immigrants and an agricultural guest-worker program. Another important measure still in the works would create a guest-worker program for nonfarm workers.

Politico reports former vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) could be working to craft his own legislation.

He is often seen in deep conversation — he calls them informal talks — with immigration players like Reps. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.), Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) and Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.). Last week, he bounced between Diaz-Balart and Boehner. And he’s in close contact with committee chairmen like Homeland Security’s Mike McCaul (R-Texas) and Judiciary’s Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), who will be two key conduits for immigration reform through the House. “I’m just trying to find the sweet spot,” Ryan told POLITICO on Friday. “I see an emerging consensus.” There are signs that Ryan is making progress, although he declined to go into specifics. His discussions are both on finding a policy and a process solution, such as what bills they move and how they move them.

The Senate bill was dead-on-arrival in the House as leadership refused to bring it to the floor. The House Ways and Means Committee came up with its own reasoning:  earlier this month the committee explained  the Senate immigration bill  violates the constitution’s Origination Clause mandating that all revenue bills must begin in the House.

The House created its own ‘Gang’ of four Democrats and three Republicans to look at ways of drafting immigration reform legislation. Rep. Luis Gutiérrez (D-Ill.) told the  Washington Post he believes a reform bill can come out of the House but it will take careful convincing on the other side of the aisle.

“Critical to the success of the bill, more than the drafting, is people’s adopting the bill as their own, and that takes, you need to go out and educate people on the elements of the bill, answer their questions. It’s big, it has a lot of elements to it. They’re going to want to know the difference between the House and Senate. That’s going to take time, and you need to build coalitions. I fear, if we leave here right now? And we’re gone for 6 weeks? I don’t think that’s a good thing for a piece of legislation that has neither been explained, nor given proper time to be adopted by any of the key constituent groups. ”

 In late June, the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee pushed forward two bills that could be integral paces to the immigration reform structure:

  • The SKILLS Visa Act – which would give employers access to the “world’s best talent by allocating green cards to foreign graduates of U.S. universities with advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields, increasing H-1B visas, and repealing the employment-based per-country cap.”
  • The Legal Workforce Act – the bill would require all employers to check a potential employee’s employment status through a mandated nationwide E-Verify system.

  Gutiérrez called E-Verify an essential part of comprehensive immigration reform.

Joey Palacios was a reporter for the Fronteras Desk.