US Republicans, Democrats clash over immigration issue

WASHINGTON: House Republicans took a tentative step toward offering citizenship to some unauthorized immigrants Tuesday, but hit an immediate wall of resistance from the White House on down as Democrats said it wasn’t enough.
The dismissive reaction to the Republican proposal to offer eventual citizenship to some immigrants brought illegally to the US as children underscored the difficulties of finding any compromise in the Republican-led House of Representatives on the politically explosive issue of immigration.
That left prospects cloudy for one of President Barack Obama’s top second-term priorities. Congress is preparing to break for a monthlong summer recess at the end of next week without action in the full House on any immigration legislation, even after the Senate passed a sweeping bipartisan bill last month to secure the borders and create a path to citizenship for the 11 million immigrants already in the country illegally.
At a hearing of the House Judiciary immigration subcommittee Tuesday on how to deal with immigrants brought here illegally as children, Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte suggested that “we as a nation should allow this group of young people to stay in the US legally.” House Republican leaders have embraced offering citizenship to such immigrants, and Goodlatte is working on a bill with Majority Leader Eric Cantor toward the goal.
It is something of a turnaround for Republicans, many of whom in the past have opposed legalizing immigrants brought here as children. And some Democrats and immigration advocates said it was a welcome development showing that Republicans have moved forward since nominating a presidential candidate last year, Mitt Romney, who suggested that people here illegally should “self-deport.”
Obama won about 70 percent of the Hispanic vote in the November election. A sizable minority of Senate Republicans supported the bipartisan immigration reform bill, raising concerns that their party might suffer setbacks in future national elections if it continued to snub the growing Latino demographic group.
Even before Tuesday’s hearing began Democrats dismissed Goodlatte and Cantor’s not-yet-released legislation, saying that any solution that doesn’t offer citizenship to all 11 million immigrants here illegally falls short.
Over Twitter, White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer slammed “the cruel hypocrisy of the GOP immigration plan: Allow some kids to stay but deport their parents.”
That drew an angry response from Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy, who chairs the immigration subcommittee. After reading Pfeiffer’s tweet aloud at the hearing, Gowdy labeled Pfeiffer “a demagogic, self-serving, political hack.”
Cantor spokesman Rory Cooper also responded to Pfeiffer, asking over Twitter: “If White House opposes effort to give children path to staying in only country they know, how serious are they about immigration reform?” In fact, Democrats and immigration advocates pushed hard in past years for legislation offering citizenship to immigrants brought as youths.