Immigration Reform Concerns Spark Opposition

"Are House Republicans planning to pull a fast one on immigration?" asks Byron York.

... the Wall Street Journal stirred a lot of interest this weekend when it reported that GOP leaders are hoping to put one over on voters who oppose reform. The plan, the Journal said, is to delay a vote on a bill until after the deadline passes for primary challenges across the country. That way, a GOP lawmaker whose constituents oppose reform could lay low until the coast was clear -- no primary challenge! -- and then vote against his voters' interest. From the Journal:

House leaders hope to bring legislation to the floor as early as April, the people close to the process said, after the deadline has passed in many states for challengers to file paperwork needed to run for Congress. Republican leaders hope that would diminish chances that a lawmaker's support for immigration bills winds up sparking a primary-election fight.

If true, such a GOP strategy would certainly set off a lot of anger among conservative voters. But is it true?

York checked with his sources over the weekend and found that, although there is "no consensus" to move on the issue, House leadership would like to move on something.

Many conservative publications have voiced opposition to immigration reform, including the Weekly Standard ('Comprehensive' Immigration Reform? Just Say No) and Investor's Business Daily (An Unholy Alliance of Business, Congress Push Amnesty).

Now this from National Review Online: Don't Do It:

The House Republican leadership has been confronted by devilishly difficult tactical choices over the years. But what to do on the issue of immigration right now isn’t one of them. The correct course is easy and eminently achievable: Do nothing.  ...

The basic tactical reason not to act now is that the last thing the party needs is a brutal intramural fight when it has been dealt a winning hand on Obamacare. It is not as though the public is clamoring for an immigration bill. Only 3 percent cited immigration as the biggest problem facing the country in a Gallup poll earlier this month. In the key contests that will decide partisan control of the Senate, Republican candidates are much more likely to be helped than hurt by refusing to sign onto any form of amnesty. ...

For now, nothing worth having can pass the Democratic Senate or get signed into law by President Obama. Rank-and-file conservatives in the House should firmly reject the course that their leadership wants to take, and convince it to reconsider. We hope, in short, that they make a clarion call for inaction.