Byron York - washingtonexaminer.com
With Republicans now in control of the House Judiciary Committee Attorney General Eric Holder and other Justice Department officials are going to be answering a lot of questions in the next two years.
Were going to start fast promises Rep. Lamar Smith new chairman of the committee as he lists a bunch of priorities: immigration national security the constitutionality of Obamacare lawsuit abuse intellectual property and more.
There are many areas in which Republicans and Holder are likely to disagree but the most contentious could be immigration starting with the enforcement of federal laws to prevent the employment of illegal immigrants. Ask Smith what hell be investigating and its the first thing he mentions. One initial hearing will be on work site enforcement he says. We want to find out why the administration is not doing more to enforce current laws. Workplace enforcement has dropped 70 percent under the Obama administration.
To Smith thats a bad idea at any time but particularly so in a period of 9.8 percent unemployment. We need every available job in America to go to legal workers to citizens and legal immigrants he says. While the administration seems focused almost exclusively on illegal immigrants who have felony records Smith wants to concentrate on workplaces with more use of the E-verify system and other ways to ensure that businesses hire only workers who are in the country legally.
Talk to Republicans these days and everything is about jobs. They campaigned by slamming Democrats for not paying enough attention to the issue in 2009 and 2010 and now that they are in power they are determined to frame their actions in terms of jobs. So the bill to repeal Obamacare is titled the Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act. Likewise when Smith appeared on Fox News on Tuesday and was asked what he will do about illegal immigration he answered simply The main thing were going to do is create jobs for Americans.
At the moment the focus on jobs means Smith is steering away from some of the hottest-button immigration issues. Asked about the Obama administrations lawsuit against the state of Arizona the Texas Republican is quick to condemn it -- he says it is misguided and unnecessary and sends the message that the administration is not interested in having our immigration laws enforced -- but doesnt see much that he can do about it as chairman. Not any more than I have already done which is I have weighed in on the side of Arizona Smith says. Thats now in the courts and it is the courts who will make that determination.
But other GOP voices on the Judiciary Committee are speaking more forcefully on those hot-button issues. Rep. Steve King of Iowa has served as ranking Republican on the Subcommittee on Immigration Citizenship Refugees Border Security and International Law and he is passionate on the subject. There are two areas in America where the law is ignored and sometimes laughed at and immigration is one of them King says. (The other he adds is election law.) King wants to change that.
King is co-sponsoring a bill The Birthright Citizenship Act of 2011 that would address the problem of anchor babies. Its a question full of constitutional complexities; birthright citizenship is grounded in the 14th Amendment and many experts believe it can only be changed by a constitutional amendment. King feels otherwise. In any event its an issue that Smith says the full committee will not be addressing in its first months.
King would also like to look into so-called sanctuary cities that is cities whose officials offer protection to illegal immigrants and openly defy federal immigration law. Hes also eager to do more on border security. We need to restart the push to complete the task of building a fence and a wall on our southern border he says. But as far as the full committee is concerned thats not on Smiths list of priorities to be addressed first. Right now the message is jobs.
On that theme Holder is likely to face a lot of questions about the administrations immigration policy in the nations workplaces. Whatever the disagreements Smith is taking care to sound nonadversarial. He and Holder have had lunch together and spoken on the phone Smith says. I expect that we will get cooperation from the Department of Justice he says. I see no reason to threaten them or issue subpoenas at this point.
Well its early.
Byron York The Examiners chief political correspondent can be contacted at
byork@washingtonexaminer.com. His column appears on Tuesday and Friday and his stories and blogposts appear on ExaminerPolitics.com.
