CAMBRIDGE, Md., (Reuters) – Republican leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives yesterday took their first step toward reforming an outdated immigration system as they floated a series of principles intended to guide a possible legislative effort this year.
According to a draft document obtained by Reuters that was intended to gauge support among the House’s 232 Republicans for tackling immigration reform this year, some children who were brought illegally into the United States by their parents would be granted citizenship.
Meanwhile, some of the millions of adult undocumented residents would no longer have to worry about being deported and would be allowed to work in the United States if they cleared a series of hurdles.
Significantly, however, they would not win a pathway to citizenship that Democrats and immigration reform groups so badly want.
The move, spearheaded by House Speaker John Boehner, marked a significant shift within the Republican Party, whose members previously supported deporting the more than 11 million people who are living in the United States illegally.
The immigration reform ideas were being discussed in closed-door sessions House Republicans were holding this week at a resort on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland, about 85 miles outside Washington, D.C.
A congressional aide told Reuters that the initiative was sparking a heated discussion among House Republicans, some of whom strongly disagreed with the principles.
This set of ideas has a long way to go before being translated into actual legislation that could be debated on the House floor as an alternative to a bipartisan bill that passed the Democratic-controlled Senate last June.
And there were no guarantees that it would even advance that far.
Reactions were varied to the broad principles House Republican leaders laid out in a one-page document.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, speaking for the largest U.S. labor organization, blasted it as “a flimsy document that only serves to underscore the callous attitude Republicans have toward our nation’s immigrants.”
Trumka said that the establishment of a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million, which the House initiative denies except for children, was needed for any immigration bill that is enacted.
