Despite the extraordinary group of coalitions behind immigration reform — Democrats, business, labor, Hispanics and many more — passage ultimately rests on the whims of an erratic, unpredictable group of House Republicans.
That’s not by design. Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) technically could bring up the Senate bill any day and it would, in all likelihood, pass with mostly Democratic votes. (Such a move would relieve GOP strategists, who desperately want the issue off the table.) But he has repeatedly vowed not to do that, and the piecemeal course he’s set forth is narrow and full of landmines that could blow up the ambitious overhaul effort.
Here are the five most dangerous landmines.
1. House GOP May Reject A Path To Citizenship
House Republican leaders have emphatically rejected the bipartisan Senate-passed immigration overhaul as “flawed” and a “massive, Obamacare-like bill” (just about the worst insult in the conservative playbook), and have instead promised a “step-by-step, common-sense approach” to reform. Translation: they’ll break up the components of reform and pass them separately.
While this means reforms to beef up border security and streamline legal immigration (primarily for high-skilled and agriculture workers) are likely to pass, a pathway to citizenship will be a very heavy lift in the House. Under the promises Boehner has made, he won’t bring up such a bill unless it has the support of half the GOP conference. And despite some signs of growing momentum, it’s far from clear they’ll get there.
Recently, House Republicans voted overwhelmingly for a bill, sponsored by outspoken restrictionist Rep. Steve King (R-IA), to put an end to President Obama’s administrative action to grant temporary visas to some unauthorized immigrants who were brought to the country illegally by their parents as children — a sign of where true conservative sentiments are.
Without a path to citizenship, Democrats vow, immigration reform is dead.
2. The Guest Worker Deal Is Very Fragile
A core component of reform is about making it easier for employers to hire skilled foreign workers, and lift obstacles for those with the highest university degrees to become permanent residents. The Senate-passed reform includes a carefully crafted deal between the Chamber of Commerce and labor unions to let businesses hire more foreign workers and establish protections for them. (Labor also insists on legalizing undocumented workers.) These two groups have been at loggerheads over reform for years and their prior inability to agree on a guest worker deal helped scuttle President Bush’s overhaul effort in 2007.
But congressional insiders close to the reform push say the deal struck earlier this year is very fragile and that there’s virtually no room to alter it — lest one side or the other pull support for reform, and take critical votes with them. That means the House, which has its own ideas for guest worker reforms, would in all likelihood have to swallow the labor-business agreement. If not, the pro-reform coalition stands to splinter, or fall apart.
3. Anti-Reform Conservatives Want To Slam The Door Shut
Conservatives recognize that the door is narrowly ajar for immigration reform that can ultimately be passed by both chambers and signed into law by President Obama. And it requires a House-Senate conference committee to convene after the lower chamber first passes the various components of reform in incremental steps. The bicameral committee would approve a plan, probably resembling the Senate bill, and set votes in both chambers.
As a result, conservatives are working to slam that door shut by demanding Boehner make sure no conference committee convenes on immigration reform.
“[I]ncremental bills are destructive if their ultimate purpose is to get to a conference committee that would bless a version of the [Senate] Gang of Eight bill,” wrote the editors of National Review last week. “House leadership aides pooh-pooh the possibility of a conference committee. Well, then, there is a simple way to allay our fears and those of other opponents of the Gang of Eight — for Speaker Boehner to make a blood-oath commitment to oppose any conference committee.”
4. Fiscal Battles Will Leave GOP Leaders Wounded
Two upcoming fiscal battles — on keeping the federal government funded after money expires Sept. 30, and raising the country’s borrowing limit this fall — will take precedence over immigration reform. Republican leaders are facing a world of hurt from conservatives who are demanding they hold these must-pass bills hostage to goals like defunding Obamacare and deep spending cuts. The White House and Democrats have no intention of paying a ransom to avert disaster, and GOP leaders recognize they lack the clout to force them.
Passing these bills will require GOP leaders to fight their conservative base, which sees the fiscal deadlines as their only leverage to extract ideological concessions from President Obama. Burning up their political capital will leave them less able to twist arms and and marshal through controversial immigration items that will be necessary to secure reform — most notably, eventual citizenship for people living in the country illegally, without which reform collapses.
5. Republicans Are Eying A Whites-First Strategy In 2014
As important as immigration reform is to the GOP’s presidential prospects in 2016, the upcoming 2014 elections are an entirely different matter. Off-year elections tend to be low-turnout affairs dominated by older, white voters who who prefer Republicans. Compromising on immigration reform, some Republicans believe, may dampen turnout among white conservatives whom the party is relying on to expand its clout in Congress. And it’ll make House Republicans — most of whom represent largely white, gerrymandered districts — vulnerable to attacks from conservative primary challengers.
As desperately as many GOP operatives want to transition toward a more inclusive and diverse tent, particularly by attracting more Hispanic voters, Republicans have been fractured, leaderless and unable to make that shift. If they end up deciding — consciously or not — to double down on the whites-first strategy, immigration reform isn’t likely to be on the agenda. That becomes truer as the 2014 elections approach.
The strategy, if pursued, is likely to backfire in the long run. But politicians aren’t particularly well known for thinking beyond the next election.
