H.Res. 952– Rule providing for consideration of H.R. 4760 – “Securing America’s Future Act” (Rep. Goodlatte – Judiciary/Homeland Security) (One hour of debate). The Rules Committee has recommended a closed Rule that provides for one hour of general debate, with forty minutes equally divided and controlled by the Chair and Ranking Member of the Committee on the Judiciary and twenty minutes of debate equally divided and controlled by the Chair and Ranking Member of the Committee on Homeland Security. The Rule allows one motion to recommit and waives all points of order against the legislation.
The Rule self-executes an amendment by Rep. Goodlatte of Virginia that makes changes to the “H-2C” agricultural guestworker program created in the bill by: streamlining the process by which unlawfully-present farmworkers can become H-2C workers and more quickly implementing the at-will component of the H-2C program. In addition, the amendment removes the bill’s reference to the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
The Rule self-executes an amendment by Rep. McCaul of Texas that corrects a drafting error in the underlying bill which strikes “each of” from line 23 of the bill to authorize $24.8 billion total for fiscal years 2018 through 2022, instead of $24.8 billion for each fiscal year through 2022.
The Rules Committee rejected a motion by Mr. McGovern of Massachusetts to strike the text of the rule and insert the text of H.Res. 774 – Rep. Denham’s Queen-of-the-Hill Resolution.
The Rules Committee rejected a motion by Mr. Hastings of Florida to make in order and provide the appropriate waivers to amendment #3, offered by Rep. Hastings which allows certain long-term TPS holders to apply for Legal Permanent Residency in the U.S.
The Rules Committee rejected a motion by Ms. Torres of California to make in order and provide the appropriate waivers to amendment #4, offered by Rep. Torres, which strikes the bill and replaces it with Rep. Nadler’s “Keep Families Together Act” which would keep families together, limit criminal prosecutions for asylum seekers, increase child welfare training, and establish a preference for family unity.
The Rules Committee rejected another motion by Ms. Torres of California to make in order and provide the appropriate waivers to amendment #7, offered by Rep. Roybal-Allard of California, Rep. Polis of Colorado, and Rep. Torres, which directs DHS to cancel removal and grant lawful permanent resident status on a conditional basis to an alien who is inadmissible or deportable or is in temporary protected status who meet certain criteria.
Members are advised that passing this Rule effectively ends the discharge process for H.Res. 774 – Rep. Denham’s Queen-of-the-Hill Resolution. Members are urged to VOTE NO.
H.Res. 953– Rule providing for consideration of H.R. 6136 – Border Security and Immigration Reform Act (Rep. Goodlatte – Judiciary/Homeland Security) (One hour of debate). The Rules Committee has recommended a closed Rule that provides for one hour of general debate, with forty minutes equally divided and controlled by the Chair and Ranking Member of the Committee on the Judiciary and twenty minutes of debate equally divided and controlled by the Chair and Ranking Member of the Committee on Homeland Security. The Rule allows one motion to recommit and waives all points of order against the legislation.
The Rules Committee rejected a motion by Mr. McGovern of Massachusetts to make in order and provide the appropriate waivers to the amendment in the nature of a substitute #2, offered by Rep. McGovern and Rep. Velazquez of New York, which provides permanent residency to eligible long-term TPS and DED holders.
The Rules Committee rejected a motion by Ms. Torres of California to make in order and provide the appropriate waivers to amendment #4, offered by Rep. Torres, which strikes the bill and replaces it with Rep. Nadler’s “Keep Families Together Act” which would keep families together, limit criminal prosecutions for asylum seekers, increase child welfare training, and establish a preference for family unity.
The Rules Committee rejected another motion by Ms. Torres of California to make in order and provide the appropriate waivers to amendment #7, offered by Rep. Roybal-Allard of California, Rep. Polis of Colorado, and Rep. Torres, which directs DHS to cancel removal and grant lawful permanent resident status on a conditional basis to an alien who is inadmissible or deportable or is in temporary protected status who meet certain criteria. Members are urged to VOTE NO.
H.R. 4760 – “Securing America’s Future Act” (Rep. Goodlatte – Judiciary/Homeland Security)(One hour of debate). H.R. 4760 is a hardline anti-immigration bill that increases enforcement at the border while gutting our nation’s immigration system. The bill:
- Fails to provide a permanent path to citizenship for DREAMers: The bill would provide a small portion of DREAMers (roughly 700,000 – 800,000) a three-year renewable non-immigrant legal status. This “solution” means that those few DREAMers who are able to receive the temporary legal status will once again be in limbo in three years. Also, two million other DREAMers who would otherwise qualify for DACA will not receive relief.
- Makes family reunification much more difficult: The bill eliminates the ability of U.S. citizens to sponsor parents, adult children, brothers and sisters for green cards. Under this legislation, spouses and minor children would be the only ones eligible to be sponsored to join their family in the U.S., thus potentially permanently separating lawful American citizens from their families.
- Ends the diversity visa lottery program: This program allows people from countries with very low immigration rates to the U.S. to apply for the opportunity to enter a lottery for a visa. Every year an estimated 10-20 million applications are received by the Federal government. Ultimately, approximately 50,000 green cards are given to those that win the lottery program, after being carefully vetted by the Federal government. The visa lottery program is an essential program that helps to diversify and enrich the population of the United States and helps to cut down on illegal immigration.
- Creates a new visa program for temporary Agricultural workers: This bill would replace the existing H-2A temporary visa program, which provides temporary visas for seasonal agricultural labor with a new H-C visa program that would allow certain industries that need year-round labor to participate.
- Imposes E-Verify on all employers and employees: This bill would mandate that all employers use the federal government’s E-Verify national identification system that checks against its records whether an employee is authorized to work. A number of errors have been found in the E-Verify system; this requirement likely means thousands of citizens and legal immigrants would be found ineligible to work.
- Provides $30 billion for Trump’s border wall: Despite President Trump’s repeated claims that he would convince Mexico to pay for a wall, Rep. Goodlatte’s bill allocates billions of taxpayer dollars toward that aim.
- Will put added strain and pressure on law enforcement: This bill will restrict jurisdictions from having policies that restrict officers from inquiring about the immigration or citizenship status of individuals, which will result in immigrant victims and immigrant communities being less inclined to cooperate with state and local law enforcement. Additionally, individuals would be criminalized for knowingly being in the U.S. in unauthorized status for over ninety days, even if that person has not violated any criminal or civil laws. Those individuals could face six months to twenty years in prison, thus exacerbating an already overburdened prison system.
- Would expand family separation: Jeff Sessions’ zero-tolerance prosecution policy is fueling the wave of family separation at the border. This bill doubles down on the use of criminal prosecution by making unlawful presence a crime that can be prosecuted as a misdemeanor, or a felony under many circumstances. This means that an undocumented person could be criminally prosecuted simply for residing in the country. This would exponentially increase family separation in the interior of the country because it transforms non-violent immigration violations into criminal offenses. This would undoubtedly result in the criminal arrest, conviction, and detention of millions of immigrants in the interior of the country, separating more parents from children.
- Requires Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to hire an additional 5,000 agents: The number of Border Patrol agents nearly doubled between FY 2002 and FY 2017 (increasing from 10,045 to 19,437), but the number of apprehensions per month for each agent is currently less than two.
- Harms Children: Republicans will likely argue that this bill treats Central American children like Mexican children and therefore does nothing more than remedy a loophole in the law. But in fact, this bill removes basic protections for all unaccompanied children, including those under the age of 13 and children with disabilities.
- Undermines Our Asylum System: The Trump Administration has taken steps to restrict asylum and this bill cements their efforts. It makes it more difficult for those fleeing from violence and persecution in their home countries to seek asylum in the U.S.
This Goodlatte immigration bill is nothing more than an attempt to appease President Trump and the most extreme faction of the Republican party. It is anti-DREAMers, anti-families, and anti-American and it must be defeated. Members are urged to VOTE NO.
H.R. 6136 – Border Security and Immigration Reform Act (Rep. Goodlatte – Judiciary/Homeland Security) (One hour of debate). Republican Leadership is parading H.R. 6136 around as a moderate “compromise” bill, but that could not be further from the truth. This bill still leaves DREAMers twisting in the wind, shrinks legal immigration, and fails to address the family separation crisis at our southern border. This bill:
- Fails to provide a permanent path to citizenship for DREAMers: This bill establishes a new immigration status called “contingent non-immigration status,” which is a six year indefinitely renewable status for DACA recipients that would put them on the pathway to citizenship. However, under this system, DREAMers would need to potentially wait up to twenty-three years to obtain their green cards and legally live in the only country most of them have ever known.
Additionally, there is a funding trigger in the bill which allows DREAMers to be held hostage in future negotiations. The President is allowed to cancel the program if any amount of money allocated for a border wall is ever transferred to be used for other purposes. This is unacceptable and would bring lawmakers right back to the same issue in future immigration discussions. - Does nothing to solve family separations at the border and exacerbates the jailing of families and children at the border: It requires DHS to incarcerate families when charges are filed against a parent for crossing the border without authorization, while such charges remain pending. This does nothing to reverse the Trump Administration’s zero tolerance policy and means children will still be detained for the actions of their parents. This bill removes protections for families who are not separated at ports of entry. It expands the jailing of families and removes basic protections of their confinement. And it allows for children to be detained for longer periods of time than is permissible under current law.
- Makes family reunification much more difficult: The bill eliminates the ability of U.S. citizens to sponsor their married children and siblings, thus potentially permanently separating lawful American citizens from their families.
- Provides $25 billion for Trump’s border wall: Despite President Trump’s repeated claims that he would convince Mexico to pay for a wall, Speaker Ryan’s bill allocates billions of taxpayer dollars toward that aim.
- Ends the diversity visa lottery program: This program allows people from countries with very low immigration rates to the U.S. to apply for the opportunity to enter a lottery for a visa. Every year an estimated 10-20 million applications are received by the Federal government. Ultimately, approximately 50,000 green cards are given to those that win the lottery program, after being carefully vetted by the Federal government. The visa lottery program is an essential program that helps to diversify and enrich the population of the United States and helps to cut down on illegal immigration.
- Revokes over 3 million previously approved citizenship petitions: For years some family members of U.S. citizens have tried to follow the law and go through the proper process for citizenship, but in one swift move House Republicans are trying to eliminate approved petitions for over 3 million people whose families already live in the United States.
- Fails to reassign 78,000 legal visa applications: This bill closes certain visa categories while doing nothing to the nearly 80,000 pending applications that have sat idle due to visa backlogs. In one swift move, Republicans will simply nullify those pending applications. This action further frustrates and disappoints people who have attempted to legally enter the United States.
- Diminishes protections for those seeking asylum: This bill raises the “credible fear” test, therefore making it more difficult for those fleeing violence and persecution in their home countries to seek asylum in the U.S. It also reduces protections for unaccompanied children.
This Speaker Ryan anti-family values bill should be seen as what it is: an anti-immigrant, hastily-constructed attempt to appease various factions of the Republican Conference in order to avoid another embarrassing defeat on the House Floor. Members are urged to VOTE NO.
Complete Consideration ofH.R. 2– Agriculture and Nutrition Act of 2018 (Rep. Conaway – Agriculture). This bill provides for the reform and continuation of Department of Agriculture programs for five years, through FY 2023. H.R. 2 was reported out of Committee without a single Democratic vote.
The bill fails to improve the farm program safety net to address uncertainty and low prices caused by the Administration’s trade and Renewable Fuel Standard policies. It eliminates mandatory funding for rural development and bio-energy programs that have helped support economic growth in rural America. It undercuts bedrock environmental laws, such as protections for endangered species; eliminates the Conservation Stewardship Program - the Nation's biggest conservation program by acreage; and rolls back protections to allow more timber harvests on federal lands. And it cuts an estimated $23 billion in benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
SNAP is an essential program that offers nutrition assistance to forty-one million low-income individuals and families. Nearly two-thirds of SNAP recipients are children, elderly, or disabled. The $23 billion in cuts is achieved by:
- Eliminating Broad-Based Categorical Eligibility (BBCE): BBCE is currently used by forty-two states in order to make eligibility thresholds for their social services programs uniform, which advantages both administrators and recipients who otherwise would waste time on duplicative paperwork and processing. BBCE also helps recipients who are returning to work or increasing their hours by helping ease a “benefit cliff” so that when wages rise, SNAP benefits fall more gradually. This is a $5 billion cut.
- Removing the automatic link between SNAP and Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) for non-elderly households: This is a $5 billion cut.
- Enforcing child support payments although the enforcement will cost more than the support received: This would require beneficiaries to cooperate with child support enforcement agencies, but it would result in SNAP beneficiaries losing $3.8 billion in benefits while costing the federal government $7.2 billion.
- Replacing existing, effective work requirements with a new, untested, underfunded approach that experts say won’t work and will instead take away benefits from vulnerable families: The bill greatly expands state Employment and Training programs but fails to provide sufficient funding for the programs to be effective, and imposes onerous new paperwork requirements that will increase costs and confusion. The changes will result in low income families losing $9 billion in SNAP benefits.
H.R. 2 attempts to hide the true impacts of these cuts by spending the savings to make the title look cost neutral, mostly through wasteful new spending on program administration, such as spending $2 on child support enforcement for every dollar saved and $7.7 billion on the new state make-work programs, for a total of nearly $15 billion in new administrative costs that do nothing to provide benefits to families. However, the bill does reinvest a small portion of these savings in modestly increasing benefits in a variety of ways. Enactment of this bill will do nothing to benefit the rural economy. It is a missed opportunity to invest in rural broadband, water and wastewater and other infrastructure needs, and it does nothing to address the opioid crisis.
Speaker Ryan is forcing consideration of this bill as part of his “Better Way” agenda, which seeks to enact welfare reform. Speaker Ryan should abandon this dangerous, ideological crusade and work on a bipartisan bill that helps the rural economy, protects the environment, and provides an effective hand up for struggling American families. Members are urged to VOTE NO.
TOMORROW’S OUTLOOK
The GOP Leadership has announced the following schedule for Friday, June 22: The House will meet at 9:00 a.m. for legislative business. The House is expected to complete consideration of H.R. 6 – SUPPORT for Patients and Communities Act (Rep. Walden – Energy and Commerce/Ways and Means). |