House Vote On “Compromise” Immigration Bill Delayed Until Next Week

After a vote on the more conservative of two GOP immigration proposals failed Thursday, a vote on the more moderate “compromise” bill was pushed off to Friday — and then to next week.

House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, R-Louisiana, said Thursday evening that more issues need to be worked out before the House takes up a vote, after House Republicans met to discuss the matter Thursday afternoon.

Republican leaders initially hadn’t anticipated making any changes to the bill ahead of the vote which had been postponed until Friday. But when the conference emerged from the meeting, Rep. Jeff Denham, R-California, issued a statement on behalf of the bill’s negotiators and said they would be adding more language dealing with agricultural worker visas and e-verify and rescheduling the vote for next week.

MWFPA has been supportive of making changes to the current agricultural guestworker program, known as the H-2A program, which is expensive, flawed, and plagued with red tape. While MWFPA has not opposed the E-Verify system, it advocates that any worker verification system not unduly burden employers, be properly funded, and have a high data integrity confidence factor.

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