GOP Immigration Bill to Leave Out Conservative Demands, Source Says

(Bloomberg) -- The GOP immigration bill headed to the House floor for a vote Wednesday won’t include two provisions that had been demanded by some conservative lawmakers, which may cost support for legislation that already was teetering on the brink of failure.

Republican lawmakers spent days working on a way to include a requirement for employers to electronically check the immigration status of workers and another that overhauls a guest worker program for agriculture, but the latest version won’t include those two components, according to a Republican involved in the negotiations who was granted anonymity to discuss them.

An amendment to put those provisions in the bill was circulated among House Republicans on Tuesday but some conservatives said the changes weren’t enough to win their votes. The measure was originally scheduled for a vote last week, but House Speaker Paul Ryan and his leadership team agreed to postpone action to give Republicans more time to work on the amendment that now won’t be included.

A different immigration bill favored by conservative Republicans failed on the floor last week.

The House likely will turn to narrower legislation that would address ways to prevent families from being separated when parents are detained after crossing the U.S. border. The Senate also is working on such a bill, but any action is likely weeks away. Congress is set to leave by Friday for a week-long July 4 holiday recess.

Family Separations

The congressional wrangling is unfolding amid the continuing chaos triggered by President Donald Trump’s policy change to separate child migrants from parents crossing the border illegally and detain them indefinitely. Trump later reversed himself, and the White House has said it’s trying to reunite undocumented parents and children who’d been separated, although it’s unclear how quickly that process is moving.

The House bill would attempt to address that issue while also providing money for Trump’s wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, tightening requirements for asylum seekers, eliminating the diversity visa lottery system and letting young immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children to apply for legal status.

Ryan, of Wisconsin, called the House measure a “great consensus bill” but has been downplaying its chances of passage. Ryan said Tuesday that if it doesn’t succeed, “then we’ll cross that bridge” to look at a more narrow proposal focused on keeping immigrant families together.

Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers, a Washington State Republican, said she is preparing to unveil a bill addressing the family separations on Wednesday if the broader immigration measure fails.

In the Senate, there have been talks on a narrow immigration measure designed to curtail family separations at the border with Mexico. Yet a small group of Senate Judiciary Committee members who held a first bipartisan meeting late Monday said they didn’t anticipate any immediate agreement.

“Nothing is going to happen this week, we don’t think,” said Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat and a leader in the effort. The group must take some time to ensure that they are making changes to the immigration system for families so they can “straighten it out so it’s meaningful,” she added.

--With assistance from Mehr Nadeem and Jennifer Epstein.

To contact the reporters on this story: Anna Edgerton in Washington at aedgerton@bloomberg.net;Laura Litvan in Washington at llitvan@bloomberg.net;Erik Wasson in Washington at ewasson@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Joe Sobczyk at jsobczyk@bloomberg.net, Justin Blum, Kevin Whitelaw

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