ImmigrationGOP opponents of the immigration bill gearing up for a campaign to kill it

Republicans opposed to the bi-partisan Senate immigration bill are getting set to launch a campaign to defeat the bill, as the Senate Judiciary Committee begins a review on the bill Thursday.

The New York Times reports that the committee is expected to spend at least three weeks on the bill, with GOP lawmakers opposing the bill ready to offer hundreds of amendments to make the bill more acceptable to them, or kill it.Some amendments have already been made public — for example, increasing the timeline for a pathway to citizenship — and the bill authors are worried that the coalition of lawmakers currently supporting the bill, and the groups and organizations promoting it, may not survive too many amendments.

“I don’t think that all the Republican amendments will be shot down,” Marielena Hincapié, the executive director of the National Immigration Law Center, told the Times. “I think the gang [of Eight] members on the committee really know they want to come out of this with a bipartisan product, and they know they will have to vote in support of some Republican amendments, even if it does move the bill a little bit to the right, for both political and substantive reasons.”

Democrats say they are prepared, and are planning their own campaign in defense of the bill.

The eight members of the Gang of Eight, who drafted the bill, would work hard to defeat the GOP amendments (and the few amendments by Democrts).

“They’ll be looking to throw obstacles in the way of the process and propose poison pills in order to frame the debate for the far right,” Frank Sharry, the executive director of America’s Voice, a pro-immigration group, told the Times. “What they’re really doing is playing towards conservatives, trying to make Marco Rubio and other Republicans uncomfortable, and mobilizing grass-roots opposition.”

Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama), a declared opponent of immigration overhaul, indicated last week that he will try to slow down the bill’s progress by pushing amendments which would “confront the fundamentals of the bill.”

“The longer this legislation is available for public review, the worse it’s going to be perceived,” Sessions told the Times Monday in a phone interview. “The longer it lays out there, the worse it’s going to smell. The tide is going to turn.”

Adding fuel to the debate, the conservative Heritage Foundation released a report last week which estimated the measure will cost U.S. Taxpayers $6.3 trillion over fifty (50) years. Republicans from the “economic” wing of the party – for example, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former head of the Congressional Budget Office and former chief economic policy adviser to U.S. Senator John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign – harshly criticized the Heritage report, saying both the study’s methodology and the numbers it presented were questionable, and massaged to serve a pre-determined anti-immigration point of view.

Both Republican and Democratic supporters of the immigration bill noted that in 2007, Heritage issued a similar report, relying on similarly suspect methodology and numbers, as part of a (successful) campaign to defeat George W. Bush’s immigration reform measure, and that it is thus not surprising to see Heritage coming out with a similar report now.

Four of the members of the Judiciary Committee — Richard Durbin (D-Illinois), Charles Schumer (D-New York), Jeff Flake (R-Arizona), and Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) — are part of the bi-partisan group that drafted the bill, and immigration advocates say they expect them to protect the integrity of the bill. Members of the group have agreed to stick together and vote down any amendments which will undermine the core ideals of the bill.

“The Judiciary Committee is going to be a good proving ground for our bill because the committee includes some of the Republican Party’s most vocal opponents of immigration reform,” Schumer told the Times. “By honing our responses to their criticisms, and perhaps even accepting some suggestions for improvement, our compromise will be all the more battle-tested when it hits the floor.”

Marco Rubio (R-Florida), who was part of the group that drafted the bill but is not on the judiciary committee, plans on supporting the bill from the outside.

“We’re working with other senators on the Judiciary Committee to improve the border security triggers, limit the discretionary power given to the administration and address concerns to make sure that today’s illegal immigrants are not eligible for federal benefits,” Rubio said in an e-mail statement. “It’s clear that if the bill isn’t improved, it won’t ever become law.”