House GOP leaders put a compromise immigration bill on ice after President Donald Trump said Friday he “certainly” would not sign the legislation.
Even if leadership pushes ahead with the vote, one key lawmaker questioned whether Thursday is still a realistic timetable. The president plans to meet with House Republicans Tuesday.
“This bill would actually give the money for it, so that's real, but it is weaker in a whole variety of ways than the other bill,” says Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies.
“However, it would expand the DACA amnesty by giving green cards to the children of temporary foreign workers. And the other big problem is it doesn't address the way parents of adult U.S. citizens are allowed to immigrate.”
Both competing bills, even one pushed by Texas Congressman Michael McCaul, include some sort of amnesty.
“But it includes lots of measures to limit the fallout of that amnesty,” Krikorian says of the so-called Goodlatte bill. “That means tighter enforcement measures and ways of offsetting the amnesty by limiting legal immigration in the future.”
Krikorian doesn't believe Democrats will back either bill.