Rep. Paul Ryan’s voting record in the U.S. House suggests he is not open to passing immigration reform.
Ryan, a Republican from Wisconsin, is on track to replace John Boehner as House speaker, having secured sufficient backing from the contentious House Freedom Caucus on Wednesday night. Earlier this week the National Review reported that Ryan strongly hinted in a Republican conference meeting that as speaker he would not bring an immigration bill to the House floor, saying it was too divisive. He made an exception for border enforcement.
Ryan’s votes in the House line up with that stance. In July, he voted for a bill to penalize sanctuary cities. He voted against the 2010 Dream Act, which would have given conditional residency and eventually permanent residency to undocumented immigrants who arrived in the U.S. as children. That vote seemed especially harsh because these children had no say in coming to the U.S. Most were brought by their parents.
OPINION
In 2012, teens and younger adults received a temporary respite from possible deportation with an executive action by President Obama known as DACA. Two years later, Ryan voted to freeze the program and prevent future executive actions.
Yet, Frank Sharry, executive director of the immigrant advocacy group America’s Voice, says he can see Ryan eventually coming around on comprehensive immigration reform, though it wouldn’t be until 2017.
This scenario would have to include another shellacking of the Republican presidential nominee by Latinos in 2016.
“We could end up with a 2012 scenario that’s turbocharged,” Sharry said, recalling President’s Obama victory against Mitt Romney with 71 percent of the Latino vote that had Republicans, including Ryan, reconsidering the party’s stand on immigration reform. That re-examination ended up being short-lived.
But in the 1990s Ryan worked on measures favorable to immigrants under former Rep. Jack Kemp at the conservative think tank Empower America and later for former Rep. Sam Brownback of Kansas.
“He was open to immigration reform until the Republican party lurched right,” Sharry said.
A Frontline documentary on the immigration battle in Washington that aired this week highlighted some of Ryan’s work with Chicago Congressman Luis Gutierrez behind the scenes on reform. In the film, Gutierrez shares a conversation he had with Ryan: “He said, ‘You’re a Catholic. I’m a Catholic. We cannot have a permanent underclass of Americans exploited in America.’”
It’s a moving statement but there’s no evidence Ryan will lead on this. Boehner, too, talked about moving on immigration reform but never attempted to call a vote. It was simply too divisive for a party at a crossroads.
The Frontline documentary gives instances where Republicans came close to supporting a version of reform in which there would be legalization of millions of undocumented immigrants and a pathway to citizenship for some, including the Dreamers. But each time they found reasons to back away.
If Ryan goes forward for the speakership, he will have the majority of his colleagues behind him. That should put him on firmer ground on immigration reform than Boehner, who came to be viewed as a coward by immigration activists.
“I’ve worked with Paul,” Sharry said of their encounters in his advocacy work. “He’s very much in favor” of immigration reform.
I’d feel better if Ryan’s voting record supported that claim.
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