House Delays Vote on GOP Immigration Bill

After Trump signed an executive order on Thursday to keep immigrant families together, Republican leaders in the House found themselves needing to delay a vote on immigration legislation. House Republicans were struggling to convince other GOP lawmakers to vote in favor of the legislation, leaving them without enough support to pass the bill.

The vote has been rescheduled several times. It was first delayed until Friday morning and was then suddenly delayed until next week following a strategy meeting between GOP leaders.

The bill had to go through a major set of changes in face of other Republicans’ propositions for legislation. Although a revised version of the bill was up for voting on Thursday and failed to pass, it received a much larger amount of support than expected. This encouraged other Republican minorities with legislative propositions to push for their ideas to be integrated.

When referring to the recent vote, Pennsylvania Representative Scott Perry stated:

“We just had a bill that got 193, without really any help, in my opinion, any real significant help. The attorney general didn’t come while it’s been sitting here for six months. The homeland security secretary didn’t come while it’s been sitting here for six months. And it got 193 votes. That seems like a pretty good starting point.”

The original proposition for the law would allegedly have protected almost two million DACA Dreamers and would have eliminated the diversity lottery. However, the original bill would also have raised funding for border protection.

The revisions to the legislation are set to be finalized by early next week. Although many members of the House agreed to hold the voting next week, many of them have decided to keep their decisions private until they vote.

Paul Ryan stated that the White House is ready and willing to move forward with voting. He said to reporters at a press conference:

“I said before, the last thing I want to do is bring a bill out of here that I know the president won’t support. Well, we have been working hand in glove with the administration on this to make sure we are bringing a bill that represents the president’s four pillars so that we can come together.”

Ryan also reported that the president was excited to follow through with these regulations. However, he has yet to state how the White House has changed their approach to the legislation, if they have done so at all, after the signing of the executive order.

Several representatives have stated that the bill will address President Trump’s “four pillars on immigration,” which are border security, a more effective handling of DACA, changing the diversity visa lottery, and ending so-called “chain migration.” This is the primary intention of the bill and will be maintained through any negotiations in the near future.

More specifically, Representative Jeff Denham stated:

“Our goal has been to have a permanent fix for Dreamers given the certainty that they need, address the 1.8 million Dreamers that are out there today and then also give them a pathway forward so they’re not only here, protecting them, but allowing them to work and go to school and signing up for military as well.”

Recently, a petition which could have moved the House to vote on several other topics regarding immigration fell short two signatures of the 218 required for it to pass.

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