Rookies of The Year
REES, MATTHEW
Rookies of the Year by Matthew Rees Four weeks ago, Congress was on the brink of passing radical immigration reform. Legislation sponsored by Sen. Alan Simpson of Wyoming and Rep. Lamar Smith of...
...Before long, Brownback, Chabot, and Chrysler, all of whom had pro-immigration instincts, put seniority concerns aside and threw themselves into a high-intensity campaign to defeat the Smith bill...
...Simpson and Smith, popular with their colleagues, were the chief immigration spokesmen for an emboldened party...
...Chabot was alarmed by government intrusion in the workplace and possible infringement of civil liberties...
...Because, says Brownback, "this was the right thing to do...
...The first red flag for the four freshmen, and the first indication Simpson and Smith had overreached, was their proposal for a Draconian worker verification system...
...Few Republicans focused on the Simpson/Smith legislation, which sailed through the requisite subcommittees with little fanfare...
...What happened...
...At the end of a tense hearing on February 29, Abraham tried to offer an amendment splitting the bill's provisions on legal immigration from those addressing illegal immigration (a move strongly favored by immigration supporters, since lumping the two together tended to ease passage of restrictions on legal immigration, when illegal immigration was the real target...
...A visibly angered Simpson charged that it was "inappropriate to recognize the junior member of the committee" and mischievously asked the chairman, Orrin Hatch, who was running the meeting, the chairman or his staff...
...other provisions entailed new taxes and regulations...
...The group won over a number of wavering senators-most important, Hatch-and on March 14 the committee voted 12-6 to divide the Simpson bill...
...During the next two weeks, Abraham continued to work with two other committee members-Mike DeWine, an Ohio Republican, and Russ Feingold, a Wisconsin Democrat-to build support for splitting the bill...
...True, and not least remarkable was that none of the freshmen insurgents had any real political reason to stand up for immigrants...
...The flurry of activity included distributing over a dozen "Dear Colleague" letters that refuted Smith's immigration-related data and highlighted some of his bill's anti-family provisions...
...The two had been colleagues at the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, where they had worked on immigration issues, and Conda persuaded Ryan to take a closer look at the Smith bill...
...But when the House easily passed its immigration bill on March 21, the most restrictive provisions had been stripped away or defeated...
...This would have required all employers to check every new employee's immigration status with a new government agency...
...Brownback, Chrysler, and Chabot all represent districts with small immigrant communities...
...Congressional staff played a key role in publicizing problems with the Smith bill and beginning the mobilization...
...On March 21, an amendment to keep legal immigration at current levels passed with a 55-vote margin...
...Howard Berman and with a motley crew of interest groups ranging from the National Association of Manufacturers to the AFL-CIO...
...Spencer Abraham of Michigan and Reps...
...While Abraham waited until December to highlight the Simpson bill's shortcomings, he was ahead of his House counterparts, who didn't get involved until a month before the House vote...
...Immigration sat on the back burner during the autumn budget scrum, and it was only on December 19 that Abraham announced his opposition to the Simpson bill...
...Abraham, whose grandparents came to Michigan from Lebanon, had met with Simpson in November to let it be known that he "had a different perspective...
...And the reforms outlined in the Senate bill, which comes to the floor April 15, have been considerably scaled back...
...But Chabot's his amendment to eliminate the verification system lost in the Judiciary Committee...
...Though Abraham lost that battle, it was Simpson who was now on the defensive...
...This was a major blow to Simpson (he still hopes to unite the bills on the Senate floor), and Abraham's performance did not go unnoticed...
...They worked closely with Democrats such as Rep...
...When the immigration bills were introduced last year, they seemed likely to pass...
...They also had public opinion on their side (witness the success of Proposition 187 in California, denying benefits to illegal immigrants...
...And so many restrictive provisions were struck from Smith's bill that all three maverick freshmen ended up supporting it in the full House...
...But the freshmen's spadework paid off...
...Brownback's legislative director, Paul Ryan, was lobbied by his counterpart in Abraham's office, Cesar Conda...
...The announcement came after the senator learned of a provision in the legislation barring immigrants who had become U.S...
...Sam Brownback of Kansas, Steve Chabot of Ohio, and Dick Chrysler of Michigan-waged an insurgent campaign to prevent their party from passing the most restrictive immigration legislation since the National Origins Quota Act of 1924...
...Spence was the glue that held together a somewhat fragile alliance under tremendous pressure from a skilled legislator like Simpson," says Frank Sharry, an Abraham ally at the Washington-based National Immigration Forum...
...As many as 50 people attended bipartisan staff briefings (rare in this session of Congress), where figures like former conservative GOP senator Malcolm Wallop spoke...
...Lamar Smith of Texas would have beefed up controls on illegal immigration and dramatically reduced legal immigration...
...The result was the rout of two senior Republicans-Simpson and Smith-long obsessed with immigration...
...nor does immigration generate much passion in Abraham's Michigan...
...Abraham and Brownback wrote in the Washington Times that this would be costly and ineffective...
...The campaign was also boosted by numerous pro-immigration editorials and op-eds published in the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Times...
...That defeat reminded us we had a tough fight ahead," recalls Rick Swartz, a pro-immigration organizer...
...Stuart Anderson, an immigration analyst at the Cato Institute and an informal adviser to those campaigning against the Smith bill, characterized the vote as a "remarkable, come-from-behind victory that wouldn't have been possible if the freshmen hadn't taken the initiative...
...Yet the House leadership was silent during this period, and there was occasional grumbling that Majority Leader Dick Armey and Judiciary Committee chairman Henry Hyde, both of whom have strong pro-immigration credentials, were excessively deferential to Smith...
...Simply put, four freshmen Republicans-Sen...
...citizens from bringing in members of their immediate families...
...Abraham spent much of January and February lobbying his colleagues on the Judiciary Committee, but the irascible Simpson employed a heavy-handed strategy...
...That it was freshmen who stepped into the vacuum underscores the unorthodox ways of the class of '94, including their willingness to challenge Congress's seniority system...
...Hatch was furious, but backed off and denied Abraham his amendment...
...So why wage a fight that angers some of the party elders and contributes to Republican disarray...
Vol. 1 • April 1996 • No. 30
