'Dreamers' deterred in search of Boehner meeting

Daniel González and Dan Nowicki | The Arizona Republic

They traveled more than 40 hours nonstop from Phoenix to Washington, D.C., on a bus rented using donations.

And once they arrived in the nation's capital, they slept on the basement floor of an Episcopal church.

But after heading to the offices of House Speaker John Boehner on Tuesday, all they got was a closed door.

The Ohio Republican declined to meet with the group of undocumented immigrants and their supporters from Arizona, who are in the nation's capital this week to try to persuade the Republican to bring immigration reform up for a vote before time runs out.

"It's disappointing," said Francisco Luna, 23, an undocumented Arizona State University student from Mexico who is part of the Arizona group of 44 undocumented "dreamers," parents and supporters. "We traveled more than 2,500 miles just to meet with him."

The group did not have an appointment with Boehner before setting out for the nation's capital. Members said they were told by Boehner's staff that the speaker would not meet with them because they are not constituents.

The group, which prayed and sang songs in Spanish outside Boehner's office for more than six hours Tuesday, vowed to try again Wednesday to meet with him.

Boehner has become the main focus of a national push by immigration-reform advocates to get Congress to pass comprehensive reform this year. The effort shifted back into high gear this week after lawmakers ended a deadlock over spending that partially shut down the federal government for more than two weeks.

Reform advocates believe there are enough Republicans in the House who would support a bill that includes a pathway to citizenship for many of the nation's 11 million undocumented immigrants.

The one person blocking the vote, reform advocates say, is Boehner.

The Senate passed with bipartisan support in June a broad immigration-reform bill that includes a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

But Boehner has repeatedly said he will not consider the Senate bill, preferring to tackle the issue of immigration reform one small piece at a time.

"From our point of view, there is a majority in the House today that would vote for comprehensive immigration reform with a path to citizenship for the undocumented," said Frank Sharry, executive director of the pro-reform organization America's Voice.

America's Voice tracks House Republicans who have expressed support for some sort of pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. He said his group also would count on the support of at least 195 House Democrats, which in combination with the Republicans theoretically would be enough to clear the 218 votes needed to pass a plan.

There also are believed to be other House Republicans who support immigration reform but haven't said so publicly because they don't want a political target on their backs, he said.

Boehner already has an uneasy relationship with many of his fellow House Republicans and could risk losing his speakership by bringing immigration reform up for a vote. But those political realities don't carry much weight with many in the immigrant community who simply see Boehner as holding up progress, Sharry said.

"Boehner has said he's not going to bring up anything that doesn't have the support of a majority of the majority, but we're going to keep pressuring him and say, 'Look, that's a procedural excuse that's blocking the majority will of the House.' "

Although the visitors from Arizona came up empty-handed Tuesday, they are not giving up. They will try to meet with Boehner today and Thursday. If they are still unsuccessful, they plan to stop by Boehner's congressional offices in suburban Cincinnati on their way back to Phoenix on Friday.

"We believe if we can have a chance to meet with Mr. Boehner, we can change his heart," said Reyna Montoya, 22, another dreamer who traveled to Washington, D.C.

Montoya, a Mesa resident who graduated from ASU in 2012, said the group wants to share with Boehner stories of how the lack of immigration reform is hurting families living in the state known as "ground zero" for immigration-enforcement policies.

"In Arizona, we have seen the pain of family separation. We see it every day," Montoya said.

Through Aug. 3 of fiscal 2013, 23,371 people in Arizona have been deported, according to statistics from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. That is about 8 percent of the 311,387 people deported nationwide during that period, according to ICE statistics.

President Barack Obama, who made immigration reform his top domestic priority after winning re-election last November with overwhelming support from Latino voters, has also said there are enough votes from Republicans and Democrats in the House for immigration reform to pass.

Still, analysts say, Boehner is unlikely to heed the calls from reform advocates because House speakers typically only bring bills to the floor that have support from the majority of their own party.

Many conservative Republicans are vehemently opposed to reforms that include a pathway to citizenship for undocumented migrants because they consider it amnesty for immigrants who broke the law. That could make it hard for a reform bill that includes a pathway to citizenship to receive support from a majority of Republicans.

"Elections have consequences: Republicans won a majority in the House, so they get to decide the agenda of the House," said John J. "Jack" Pitney Jr., a political scientist at Claremont McKenna College in Southern California.

"Even if it's not a hard-and-fast rule, the majority party seldom wants the minority party to drive the agenda," he said

Though uncommon, there have been some high-profile examples in which a speaker of the House has bucked his fellow majority-party members, Pitney said.

In the 1980s, Democratic House Speaker Thomas "Tip" O'Neill Jr. allowed Republican President Ronald Reagan's economic plan to proceed. In the 1990s, Democratic House Speaker Tom Foley, who died last week at age 84, likewise backed the North American Free Trade Agreement, which was a priority of Democratic President Bill Clinton's but faced opposition from many House Democrats and their allies.

During the recently concluded partisan battle over the government shutdown and the federal debt ceiling, Boehner was forced to bring the final deal to the House floor despite lacking majority Republican support.

That development has given hope to some immigration-reform supporters, but Pitney said it doesn't necessarily mean Boehner would be willing to pass immigration reform the same way.

"In the case of the shutdown, the alternative was an economic disaster, so it was pretty clear what he had to do," Pitney said. "In this case (immigration reform), there's no immediate crisis and it's an extremely difficult vote for a lot of Republicans."