It’s Finished…until Next Year
After weeks of dead and undead puns, the prospects for amnesty legislation in the House came to a screeching halt last week when Speaker John Boehner finally committed to not using House legislation to conference with the Senate amnesty bill.
There’s now virtually no chance the House will consider immigration legislation in 2013. With less than 11 days left on the legislative calendar, there’s no time and little desire to take up the issue.
Americans have themselves to thank for killing the Senate bill. They recognized that this over 1,000 page behemoth had the same “we need to pass the bill so you can find out what’s in it” problem as the now floundering healthcare law. In fact, GOP Leader Eric Cantor compared the Senate bill to Obamacare on the House floor Friday, saying, “We don’t want to commit that same mistake. We want to be smarter about it…the Senate bill was passed with not a lot of focus on the details.”
Americans also were unconvinced that a bill rewarding legal status and work permits to 11 million illegal aliens at a time of mass unemployment and historically low labor participation would in any way benefit American workers.
However, House Republicans are not ready to explicitly abandon amnesty. Meaning that for those who support true immigration reform that serves Americans, the fight is only half won.
A handful of immigration bills have been voted out of committee and could see floor action in 2014. Some House legislation – Rep. Bob Goodlatte’s agricultural guestworker bill, Cantor’s yet-to-be introduced “KIDS Act,” and Rep. Darrell Issa’s forthcoming mass legalization bill – include amnesty for illegal aliens.
Now, Americans must remain vigilant that the same flawed amnesty and expansion of legal immigration present in the Senate bill is not merely passed piecemeal in the House.