Republicans were bracing for a fractious debate over the future of America’s 11 million undocumented workers as they gathered at a secluded retreat on the coast of Maryland to reconcile long-standing differences over immigration reform.

The meeting of House Republicans at a luxury spa in the Chesapeake Bay comes at a pivotal moment for immigration reform, which many in Washington believe could be the focus of the only major piece of legislation with a real shot at passing in 2014.

It is also a critical juncture for the GOP, which is hoping to make significant gains in November’s mid-term elections but is in the midst of a tug of war between establishment and Tea Party wings of the party.

The closed-door discussions will revolve around a new set of principles on immigration reform that have been drafted by the party’s congressional leadership in recent weeks as a way to appease the conservative wing of the party, which is hostile to any changes that could be interpreted as an “amnesty” for undocumented workers.

The document, according to a Republican adviser briefed on its contents, combines a tough statement on border security measures with proposals to bring undocumented workers “out of the shadows” with an yet-to-be-defined legal status that would permit them to work and travel in the country.

Undocumented immigrants brought to US soil as children – so-called ‘DREAMers’ – would be given a route to full citizenship under the proposals.

The document was circulated as party members arrived at the retreat on Wednesday, in advance of an open discussion that is set to begin on Thursday afternoon. The document will not be voted on, but rather serve as a template to stimulate discussion among Republican members of Congress and allow the leadership to test the appetite for legislation among the rank and file.

“This problem has been around for at least 15 years,” the Republican speaker of the House, John Boehner, said during a break in the conference on Thursday. “It has been turned into a political football. I think that is unfair.”

He added: “I think it's time to deal with this, but how you deal with it is critically important.”

Boehner also said members would openly discuss extending the Treasury’s debt limit, which conservatives want to use to leverage concessions out of the White House.

The speaker signalled his lack of appetite for a confrontational showdown, saying defaulting on the national debt is “the wrong thing”. “We don’t want to do that,” he said.

After forcing last year’s government shutdown, House Republicans are desperate to rehabilitate their reputation and show they can build bridges.

“It is important to show the American people we’re not just the opposition party, we’re the alternative party,” Boehner said.

Other figures in the House Republican leadership echoed Boehner’s remarks, stressing areas on which they agreed with president Barack Obama’s State of the Union address on Tuesday.

In June last year, the Democrat-controlled Senate passed a comprehensive immigration reform bill, which included a 13-year pathway to citizenship for the country’s illegal immigrants.

Unable to persuade a majority of his caucus to back the measure, Boehner rejected the Senate bill, but has spent the past four weeks working intensively on a diluted framework of reform that would be advanced incrementally, in piecemeal bills.

The two-day retreat is Boehner’s opportunity to push his proposals during what pro-immigration lobbyists say is a unique and rare window of opportunity.

"We hear the president say that this is to be a year of action, and that is our goal also," Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the chair of the House Republican conference, said. Eric Cantor, the Republican majority leader, said the party was "not about opposing the president" and echoed much of Obama's language about the need to improve social mobility.



Republican leaders also released an open letter to Obama in which they told him, "where there is the potential for agreement we believe it is critical that we come together".

The letter's proposals for action consisted mostly of Republican bills already passed by the House that Obama and his fellow Democrats in the Senate are unlikely to support, but the gesture – and the tone being adopted by GOP leaders – signals an attempt to improve the party's image in an election year.

John Boehner speaks during the House Republican Leadership press conference in Cambridge, Maryland with Eric Cantor and Cathy McMorris Rodgers. Photo: Jim Watson /AFP /Getty Photograph: Jim Watson/AFP /Getty Images

Immigration reform could go a long way to doing that. A Republican source said Thursday's discussion would be “an open forum”, with debate kickstarted by Bob Goodlatte, the Republican chairman of the House judiciary committee, who was opposed to the Senate bill, but is now pushing for a watered-down set of reforms.



“This is a big evolution,” said Tamar Jacoby, a Republican who favours immigration reform and is the president of advocacy group ImmigrationWorks.

“If we really see a piece of paper, as we expect, from the House Republican leadership saying we need legal status for millions of American immigrants living here illegally it is a major breakthrough. That would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.”



In his State of the Union address, Obama was careful not to antagonise Republicans on immigration, making only brief remarks on the subject to restate his plea for action. Steering clear of point-scoring, the president stressed the economic benefits of immigration reform, which he said members of both parties agreed upon.

“His audience on that topic was Republicans rather than the general public,” said Angela Kelley, vice-president of immigration policy at the Center for American Progress, a liberal thinktank. “It was helpful that he didn’t say too much.”

The strategy may have worked; as he spoke on immigration, a number of senior House Republicans, including Boehner and Cantor, were seen to applaud. Paul Ryan, the Wisconsin congressman and former vice-presidential nominee who is often a bellwether for rank and file GOP members in the House, stood on his feet before clapping.

Shortly afterwards, Ryan told MSNBC that the principles favoured by the Republican leadership would be “a probationary kind of a status”. Crucially, he indicated that any new form of legal status could be acquired by undocumented workers “while the border is being secured”.

House Republicans have until now preferred a system of “triggers”, in which programs to recognise undocumented workers would be dependent upon border security milestones being reached. That would be unacceptable to Democrats, whose support Boehner is likely to need to pass legislation in the House.

Kelley said immigration reform campaigners were hoping to exploit a “palpable political thaw” in Washington over recent weeks, as giant pieces of legislation, including a bill to fund the government and the farm bill, proceeded through Congress with rare bipartisan support.

The dynamics for Boehner could be complicated, however, as he will have to take on opponents within his own party, such as Steve King of Iowa, arguably the party's most outspoken critic of immigration reform.

“If something like this passes, hereafter anyone who gets into America could stay,” King said on Tuesday, after Obama's speech. “Our immigration policy would be: we're going to have people guarding the border, but if you get past the first line [of defence] you are home free.”

Even if Republicans begin to converge around a set of the principles on immigration before the weekend, significant new legislation is unlikely to be brought to the floor of the House until after the filing deadlines for the party's primaries.

That is because many Republicans will only risk voting on the contentious issue after the risk of a primary challenge from a conservative opponent has passed. As a result, most expect Boehner to hold off on any controversial legislation until at least May.

Edward Alden, an immigration expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, said the compromise being floated by Republican leaders was a middle-ground proposal that would be “potentially acceptable for both sides”.

Alden said a legal status that does not afford those affected full citizenship rights would also satisfy some of the most powerful lobbyists for immigration reform: corporate America.

“The business community badly wants immigration reform, for different reasons,” he said. “The agricultural lobby wants it to ensure a steady supply of low-wage farm workers, restaurants want it so they will have low-wage dishwashers, and Microsoft and Google want it so they can recruit Indian computer scientists.”

“They don’t care whether it is citizenship or legal status – what they want is a compromise both sides can live with.”

Many immigration reform campaigners, however, have serious concerns about a legal status regime that they warn would risk institutionalising a system of cheap foreign labour that provides limited rights to workers.

“We do not want to see second-class citizens here in the United States,” said Arturo Rodriguez, president of United Farm Workers. “We’re hopeful that the principles Republicans will speak to will not be implementing a system of that nature.”

However, as Republican lawmakers mull which way to turn on immigration, it will be business interests, rather than immigrant right groups, who will be able to press their case.

The GOP retreat is being sponsored by the Congressional Institute. The non-profit organisation is paid for and run by corporate lobbyists.

• This story was amended on 30 January 2014 to correct the definition of DREAMers.

