House Immigration Group’s First Meeting Since Boston Bombing
House immigration negotiators are scheduled to meet Wednesday evening for the first time since the Boston terrorist attacks and their aftermath, and sources expect the group to discuss the criticism leveled at the Senate’s overhaul bill.
Last week, House Republicans negotiating an immigration overhaul reacted positively to the Senate “gang of eight” moving first to release their bill. They said it would allow the bipartisan House working group to react to any problems found in the Senate legislation and address them in their bill before it is unveiled.
And in fact, a Republican aide familiar with the House immigration negotiations said group members have taken note of the pushback the Senate bill has received in regard to the legislation’s border security “triggers.” House “gang of eight” members have watched as Sen. Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, has fielded repeated challenges from conservatives about the effectiveness of such triggers, particularly as it relates to the path to citizenship provided for in the bill.
Opponents and others skeptical about the Senate bill charge that the legislation would immediately legalize millions of undocumented immigrants (the path to full citizenship would take about a decade) but that the border security triggers would fail to guarantee that multi-year border security upgrades and projects called for in the package would be supported by future Congresses and future presidents.
“That is something the House group will look at,” the GOP aide said. “I think people haven’t paid as much attention” yet as they otherwise would have because of what happened in Boston.