[Mb-civic] Immigrant Bill Fallout May Hurt House GOP - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

Immigrant Bill Fallout May Hurt House GOP
Strict Provisions Are Uniting Critics

By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 12, 2006; A01

In the wake of this week's massive demonstrations, many House 
Republicans are worried that a tough anti-illegal-immigration bill they 
thought would please their political base has earned them little benefit 
while becoming a lightning rod for the fast-growing national movement 
for immigrant rights.

House Republicans rushed through legislation just before Christmas that 
would build hundreds of miles of fence along the U.S.-Mexico border, 
require that businesses verify the legality of all employees' status 
through a national database, fortify border patrols, and declare illegal 
immigrants and those who help them to be felons. After more lenient 
legislation failed in the Senate last week, the House-passed version 
burst into the public consciousness this week, as hundreds of thousands 
of protesters across the country turned out to denounce the bill.

Yesterday, House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and Senate Majority 
Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) issued a joint statement seeking to deflect 
blame for the harshest provisions of the House bill toward the 
Democrats, who they said showed a lack of compassion. "It remains our 
intent to produce a strong border security bill that will not make 
unlawful presence in the United States a felony," Hastert and Frist said.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) fired back that "there's no running 
away from the fact that the Republican House passed a bill and Senator 
Frist offered one that criminalizes immigrants."

House Democrats acknowledged they helped block Republican efforts on the 
floor in December to soften the Republican-crafted section declaring 
illegal immigrants to be felons, but they said ultimate responsibility 
for the bill rests with the Republicans, who voted overwhelmingly for 
its passage.

"The Democrats were not going to do anything to make it easier for 
Republicans to pass an atrocious bill," said Jennifer Crider, a 
spokeswoman for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

Yesterday's maneuvering underscores how the immigration issue has 
mushroomed into a fierce political debate with potentially large stakes 
heading into the November congressional elections. The hundreds of 
thousands of protesters in the streets Monday vividly demonstrated the 
power of the issue, which some strategists say threatens to undercut 
President Bush's long-standing hope of making Hispanic voters a GOP 
constituency.

"There was political calculation that they could make this the wedge 
issue of 2006 and 2008, but it's not playing out that way," said Rep. 
Raul M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.). "This has galvanized and energized the 
Latino community like no other issue I have seen in two decades, and 
that's going to have electoral consequences."

Republicans say they could accept that sentiment if they believed they 
had won political points from the GOP's restive base. But for all the 
negatives, they don't have many positives to show for their efforts.

"From the standpoint of those who would applaud the House's stand, I'd 
say we have not gotten sufficient credit," said Rep. Phil Gingrey 
(R-Ga.), a reliable supporter of House leaders. "I'm somewhat distressed 
that they have not gotten word of what we've done."

The politics of the issue have shifted markedly since the House acted. 
Republican lawmakers are increasingly saying they will now consider some 
avenue to grant illegal immigrants access to lawful employment. And 
Democrats who voted for the House bill with an eye on their political 
futures or to preempt feared attacks from conservatives are rethinking 
their position.

Rep. Ted Strickland (D-Ohio), a supporter of the bill, was greeted by 
protesters and shouts of "Migration is not a crime" in February when he 
opened his Ohio gubernatorial campaign office in Cleveland. Now, he 
regrets his vote, campaign spokesman Jess Goode said.

The 36 Democrats who voted for passage included Rep. John T. Salazar 
(Colo.) -- whose brother, Sen. Ken Salazar (D-Colo.), has railed against 
the House measure -- and Rep. Harold E. Ford Jr. (Tenn.), who may find 
it difficult to tap into the mobilizing Latino vote in his run for the 
Senate this year.

Although much has been made of the failed efforts in the Senate last 
week to forge a bipartisan measure to toughen border security while 
creating a system to allow many of the 11 million to 12 million illegal 
immigrants here to achieve legal status or citizenship, the actions in 
the House late last year have received little attention until now.

House GOP leaders had rushed lawmakers back to Washington for a rare 
December session to vote on the immigration measure, hoping to give 
their members an accomplishment to brag about over the long winter 
recess. But it was the deft maneuvering of Democrats that preserved the 
bill's most infamous provision, declaring illegal immigrants felons, and 
that provision has helped turn the bill into a political albatross for 
some Republicans, Democrats say.

The bill, written by House Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James 
Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.), was passed in a matter of hours, nine days 
before Christmas. Just seven amendments were allowed to come to a vote, 
none of them fundamentally altering the legislation.

Sensenbrenner's committee bill included the felony provision, but when 
he took it to the House floor Dec. 16, he offered an amendment to 
downgrade the offense of being an undocumented worker from a felony to a 
misdemeanor.

The Democratic leadership pushed its members to vote against the 
amendment, and 191 Democrats did. Only eight Democrats voted with 
Sensenbrenner.

"It was an ugly bill in most respects, the felony stuff, the wall and no 
amendments," said Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), who tried to add a 
guest-worker provision but was not allowed a vote. "The leadership saw 
this more as a statement than a policy, but I think in the end we would 
have been better off had we been more deliberative."

With so little debate, media coverage was minimal, and what coverage 
there was got little notice in the holiday bustle, Republicans say.

"We're victims of our own success," said Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.).

Sensenbrenner's bill is getting attention now, not so much from 
Republican-base voters but from Spanish-language radio shows and Latino 
activists who have made it the focus of marches that have drawn more 
than a million protesters. One sign on the Mall Monday read "Sense, not 
Sensenbrenner."

In a letter to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops last week, 
Sensenbrenner charged that all but eight Democrats "decided to play 
political game by voting to make all illegal immigrants felons."

But Democratic votes alone did not seal the defeat. Sixty-five 
Republicans voted against it, too, including anti-immigrant firebrands 
such as Rep. J.D. Hayworth (Ariz.) and moderates such as Rep. Thomas M. 
Davis III (Va.). Rep. John A. Boehner (Ohio) voted against the amendment 
and the bill just weeks before he was elected majority leader.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/11/AR2006041101643.html
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