It’s basically a waste of time for one chamber of Congress to spend a lot of effort on a bill that has no chance of passing the other chamber. In an ideal world, neither chamber of Congress would bother working on bills that have no chance of becoming law. But politics has its place. Sometimes you just want to highlight the fact that the other party opposes something popular. What makes zero sense, however, is to debate legislation that will never become law that divides your own party. That’s what House Republicans are doing with Rep. Lamar Smith’s (R-TX) E-Verify immigration bill.
Like it or not, our agriculture sector relies on undocumented workers. When Georgia and Alabama passed strict immigration laws this year, they quickly discovered that without workers to pick the crops farmers lost millions of dollars and food went to waste. Republicans are in complete denial about this. They simply don’t want to acknowledge economic reality. They’re incapable of crafting a solution because they won’t agree on the basic facts.
Yet, Republicans who represent agriculture-rich districts have to answer to their farmers, and they don’t want an E-Verify system that would be immediately ruinous.
California Rep. Dan Lungren (R) told The Hill that he supports E-Verify but that “it has to be accompanied by a workable guest worker program for agriculture.”
“A bill on E-Verify won’t come to the floor unless we address agriculture, I am convinced,” Lungren said.
The bill is creating some revelations. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce supports it because the bill would supersede state and local laws making it easier for businesses to comply. Then we have Rep. Lou Barletta (R-PA), who made a name for himself as the rapidly anti-Latino mayor of Hazelton, Pennsylvania, saying that he opposes the bill.
“I have no faith that the federal government is serious about enforcing our immigration laws. They haven’t, I don’t believe they will. And the Supreme Court agrees that the states have the right — why would we come along now and take that away from them? And the United States Chamber gets solidly behind this preemption — which raises all sorts of red flags for me — this is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, this bill,” Barletta said in an interview with The Hill.
I’m not sure what he’s talking about with the Supreme Court, but Barletta is a classic paranoid freak.
As i said at the top, this bill is not going to become law. What’s interesting is that it might not even pass the House. Why would the Republicans bring it up then?
Because John Boehner isn’t very good at his job.
