President Barack Obama has the power to adjust the way immigration laws are enforced, and Congress has the power to reign him in.
There is no present border crisis. Illegal border crossings have shrunk dramatically under President Obama. However, there is a lingering problem of an underground society of businesses who deal in exploited human labor, forcing people who have illegally crossed a border into the United States in the past to work in dangerous conditions, without benefits, for wages so low that they are literally criminal.
In order to deal with this problem, President Barack Obama announced a series of executive orders that focus federal law enforcement on these criminal employers working within the United States. Under the executive orders, people who have illegally crossed the border in the past will still be punished – but with a fine that will go toward reducing the federal budget deficit, rather than with deportation. This shift allows these workers to come forward to help federal law enforcement officials crack down on the underground networks of illegal employers.
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Republicans in Congress are furious about this, because they want the federal government to focus more on punishing workers, and less on punishing the illegal employers who abuse them. So, yesterday afternoon, Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives orchestrated the passage of H.R. 5759. This bill would force President Obama to deport workers rather than to fine them. The legislation would protect networks of illegal employers by forcing their victims back into the shadows.
Republicans have acknowledged that their legislation is a “meaningless show vote”, because the leaders of the U.S. Senate have expressed no interest in accelerating the bill through the committee process in time to come up for a floor vote before the current session of Congress ends. Still, we can expect the Republicans, who will gain control of both houses of Congress in January, to bring up similar legislation next year, so it’s worth paying attention to how this roll call vote played out.
Mostly, the vote took place according to party lines. House Republicans voted for H.R. 5759. Democrats in Congress voted to block the bill, continuing to protect workers from illegal employers.
A few members of Congress passed party lines, however.
Republicans who voted to protect workers, voting against H.R. 5759: Mike Coffman, Jeff Denham, Mario Diaz-Balart, Louie Gohmert, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Marlin Stutzman, and David Valadao.
Democrats who voted to protect illegal employers, voting for H.R. 5759: John Barrow, Mike McIntyre, and Collin Peterson.
