Conference committee on immigration bills

I am sad to report that the House is preparing to go into conference committee with the Senate to “iron out differences” between the House’s “enforcement only” bill, H.R. 4437, and the Senate’s worst-bill-to-pass-a-chamber-of-Congress-in-the-history-of-the-United-States, S.2611, also known as the Dissolve America Now Act. How do you “iron out differences” between two bills that have nothing in common? I deeply regret that the House didn’t see its way to avoiding the whole stupid exercise, drawing a line in the sand against the Senate’s insane bill and going to the voters in November on that basis.

Here’s an update on the situation from FAIR:

Both the House and the Senate are soon expected to formally announce conferees for the difficult conference over immigration reform. Given that H.R.4437 and S.2611 are starkly different bills, it is unclear whether House and Senate negotiators will even be able to agree on a starting point for discussion. Another difficulty members will face is the fact that this conference committee will be unusually large, including over 25% of the Senate and a large number of House members. People familiar with Capitol Hill agree that having this many members is to make sure each side is represented in force. If the conferees are able to produce a compromise bill, the result will then be gauged for public satisfaction when voters hit the polls in November.

House Judiciary Chairman James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) has made it clear that he does not intend the House enforcement-first bill to be overshadowed by the massive amnesty that passed the Senate two weeks ago. Chairman Sensenbrenner has again dismissed the amnesty provision as being unacceptable for the final version of the immigration reform legislation. The Chairman has also stated that he will “insist” on the House version for an employment verification system, which requires employers to confirm legal status of new and existing employees, while the Senate’s system only requires employers to verify the status of new hires.

Another promising signal is that Chairman Sensenbrenner hopes to have many of the conference negotiations open to the public and not behind closed doors. As the Chairman told Congressional Quarterly, “I would like to see as many public conferences as possible so that the American people can see what the Senate and the House negotiators are doing on this issue.” FAIR will be watching closely and will keep you updated.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 05, 2006 08:51 PM | Send