House GOP Signals Interest in E-Verify
Politico reports:
If conservatives expected Republican Rep. Lamar Smith to champion the most controversial anti-immigration measures when he takes control of the House Judiciary Committee next month, they’re in for a surprise.
After weeks of speculation that he would pursue a scorched-earth immigration agenda, Smith detailed his to-do list for the first time in an interview with POLITICO – and it’s an early but important signal that the new House Republican majority plans to attack the issue of immigration through the prism of jobs, rather than red meat for the base.
Smith’s first two hearings will focus on expanding E-Verify, a voluntary electronic system for checking the immigration status of workers that President Barack Obama supports, and scrutinizing the administration’s record on worksite enforcement.
“They are what I call 70-percent issues – 70 percent or more of the American people support those efforts,” Smith said. “I think they are popular across the board and I think they will be appreciated by all American workers regardless of their ethnicity or background or anything else.”
At the same time, he downplayed the key planks in the conservative immigration agenda.
He won’t say when his committee plans to tackle birthright citizenship, the policy of granting citizenship to every child born in the country. He doesn’t want to talk about whether he will pursue reducing the level of legal immigration, family migration or work visas – all at the top of the wish-list for anti-illegal-immigration advocates.
“That is later on in this Congress; that is not our initial focus,” Smith said. “We don’t have any specific plans now in the early months to move on these issues. The focus is on creating jobs and protecting jobs.”
