WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives appear increasingly unlikely to pass an immigration overhaul this year, preferring to focus their election-year strategy on a unified assault on President Barack Obama’s healthcare law.
House Speaker John Boehner hinted at that strategy on Thursday, when he expressed doubt to reporters that a sweeping revision of U.S. immigration laws would get through Con-gress this year because Republicans did not trust Democratic President Barack Obama’s administration to enforce any immigration laws Congress might write.
But many House Republicans have made clear that they want to put off an almost certainly divisive debate over immigration until next year, when they hope to have more legislative clout and a majority in the Senate. The party is becoming more optimistic about its chances in the Nov. 4 elections, when Republicans are likely to retain control of the House and will try to gain six seats in the Senate to take control from Democrats.
Several lawmakers have estimated that about one-third of House Republicans want to tackle immigration this year, while another one-third or so back the effort but want to avoid a battle in 2014. A smaller group is opposed to any legislation other than beefing up domestic security to guard against illegal immigration, they say.
But a delay could make an immigration overhaul more difficult, supporters say, pushing the debate into the start of the 2016 presidential race when Republican candidates almost certainly will move to the political right to court conservative voters who dominate the party’s early nominating contests.
Analysts in both parties say the scenario could be a long-term recipe for disaster for the Republicans, who promised after its 2012 election defeat to tackle immigration as a way to make inroads with a fast-growing Hispanic community that leans Democratic and overwhelmingly supported Obama over Republican Mitt Romney.
“If you land this highly contentious and emotional (immigration) debate in the middle of a presidential selection year, it creates untold opportunities for demagoguery,” said Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster.
“The people who believe that 2014 is not the right year are also likely to believe that 2015 is not the right year and 2016 is not the right year,” he said. “And before you know it, the hole we’ve started digging with Hispanics gets deeper and deeper.”
FOR REPUBLICANS,
A DIRE PICTURE
After the 2012 elections, many Republicans — particularly those in the party’s leadership — described an immigration overhaul as an urgent issue.
Obama won 71 percent of the Hispanic vote in part because the 2012 presidential primary season included several instances in which Republican candidates used harsh rhetoric about Hispanic immigrants. Some Republicans, like Ayres, fear that every misstep and delay on immigration legislation also could seal the party’s fate in the 2016 presidential election and beyond by preventing the party from cutting into Democratic support among Hispanics.
Republicans acknowledge that the nation’s fast-growing Hispanic population offers a dire picture for their party. Every month an estimated 73,000 more U.S.-born Hispanics become eligible to vote at age 18, and Latino groups are ramping up their voter registration efforts.
“There is a penalty for not doing something,” said John Feehery, a Republican strategist and former House leadership aide. “The longer this delays, the harder it is for Republicans to build bridges with a very important voting bloc.”
The immigration push has hit a roadblock in the Republican-led House, where conservatives have called a bill passed by the Senate an “amnesty” plan that would be unfair to immigrants who have sought citizenship legally. The bill would offer a pathway to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants.
House Republican leaders have tried to craft a compromise that would offer legalization without citizenship for some of the 11 million, but they emerged from a fractious closed-door retreat with their caucus last week more pessimistic about immigration legislation.
“I’ve never underestimated the difficulty in moving forward this year,” Boehner said Thursday. He refused to say whether he would advance an immigration plan to the House floor this year.
‘WHY CREATE MORE HAVOC?’
With public dissatisfaction over Obamacare stoking hopes of a big election win in November, many House Republicans do not want to muddle their healthcare and economic arguments with an immigration battle that angers the party’s conservatives.
“Why create more havoc right now? Let’s get the election over with and when the smoke clears, let’s sit down and make a levelheaded solution to the (immigration) problem,” Republican Rep. John Carter of Texas told Reuters after last week’s retreat.
Democrats said, however, that Republicans’ failure to pass an immigration bill could help them keep control of the Senate. In at least five competitive Senate races, House Republicans are expected to be the party’s Senate candidate.
