Days after winning a sixth term in the U.S. House, Representative Steve King is ready to battle fellow Republicans in the House and Senate who are ready to deal on comprehensive immigration reform. He also confirmed that he will follow through on a lawsuit challenging President Barack Obama’s executive order to block deportations of some undocumented immigrants, who were brought to this country as children.
King was the guest on Iowa Public Television’s “Iowa Press” program this past weekend. You can find the video and full transcript here. He sounded pessimistic about prospects for protecting “traditional marriage” and shutting down aspects of the 2010 health care reform law. In contrast, King is determined to fight any version of immigration reform that, in his view, conflicts with the “rule of law.”
What I expect is going to come on the immigration side of this is that we will see open borders republicans team up with democrats to try to do some things to resolve what they call comprehensive immigration reform. We know that always includes a component of amnesty so we’ll be back to discussing this again about the rule of law and I’ll be fighting to defend the rule of law and they’ll be seeking to —
[Dean] Borg: I think you’re saying that I agree with the priorities, the devil is in the details.
King: Absolutely. But it would be really nice to write that policy for the President and get him to sign off on it.
[O.Kay] Henderson: In the Monday morning quarterbacking that has been going on among republicans, though, they have been arguing that you need to reach out to immigrants and immigration reform could just be the vehicle for that.
King: Immigration reform has, though, it has emerged as a code word for suspending the rule of law. So I think this — we need to market ourselves to the whole country on republican values across the full spectrum of our values. And this election, even though we didn’t win across the country it doesn’t mean that our values aren’t sound. We need to go back to the table, reassess these things and stand on the same principles and they should be very attractive especially to Hispanic families who are strong on faith, they’re strong pro-life, they’re strong on marriage, they’re strong on the work ethic and there are a whole lot of good Hispanic entrepreneurs that I think should naturally migrate towards the republican party.
It’s hard for me to see how House Speaker John Boehner or anyone else could get immigration reform through a Republican-controlled chamber. Senate Republicans desperate for a way back to a majority may embrace policies they opposed a few months ago, but House Republicans are still running the show (and could easily stay in the majority for a decade thanks to gerrymandering). Molly Hooper reported yesterday for The Hill,
Hard-line immigration reform lawmaker Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) is expected to take the gavel of term-limited Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas). The panel has primary jurisdiction on immigration matters.
Goodlatte opposes efforts to create guest-worker programs, or grant amnesty to illegal aliens. He spoke out against the DREAM Act when the House voted on the measure in December of 2010, calling it “unfair” and “ripe for fraud.”
Goodlatte said that “the DREAM Act could mean mass amnesty for 2.1 million illegal immigrants…same thing occurred after the 1986 amnesty bill, the Immigration and Control Act, was enacted. Everyone said that was going to end illegal immigration. It opened the doors to more. This is going to do exactly the same thing.”
Republicans like King and Goodlatte should be able to keep immigration reform from passing during the next two years.
In contrast, I think King faces long odds in trying to overturn a presidential executive order on deportation policy. Obama issued an executive order in June to temporarily protect some undocumented immigrants from deportation. Many Republicans criticized the new policy as a back-door approach to implementing the DREAM Act. That legislation passed the U.S. House over Republican objections in December 2010, but stalled in the Senate thanks to a GOP filibuster.
King has long opposed any attempt to give undocumented immigrants a path to legal status or citizenship. He vowed in June to file a federal lawsuit over the president’s executive order:
“Americans should be outraged that President Obama is planning to usurp the Constitutional authority of the United States Congress and grant amnesty by edict to 1 million illegal aliens,” said King. “There is no ambiguity in Congress about whether the DREAM Act’s amnesty program should be the law of the land. It has been rejected by Congress, and yet President Obama has decided that he will move forward with it anyway. President Obama, an ex constitutional law professor, whose favorite word is audacity, is prepared to violate the principles of Constitutional Law that he taught.”
Speaking on “Iowa Press” this weekend, King said he hoped to file that lawsuit this month.
The President of the United States has violated the Constitution and I don’t know that there is an argument there because he has made the argument himself that he didn’t have the authority to do what he subsequently did. And if the President can suspend immigration law and then out of thin air create a work permit and direct the U.S. citizenship and immigration services to deliver that work permit then there is no reason for a Congress. The President can unilaterally by edict do anything he wants to do. So we all take an oath to uphold the Constitution and that is what this is about. I’ve got an obligation to do that.
A sizable number of House Republicans will probably support King’s lawsuit, but since the president’s executive order was limited in scope and duration, I expect it will withstand scrutiny.