Republicans warn that Democrats will tank the whole bill if they include the provision. | REUTERS Gay rights push threatens immigration deal

The most serious threat to bipartisan immigration reform doesn’t involve border security or guest workers or even the path to citizenship.

It’s about gay rights.


Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) has told advocates that he will offer an amendment during the bill markup next week allowing gay Americans to sponsor their foreign-born partners for green cards, just as heterosexual couples can. The measure is likely to pass because Democrats face pressure from gay rights advocates to deal with it in committee, rather than on the Senate floor, where the odds of passage are far less favorable.

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But by doing so, Republicans warn that Democrats will tank the whole bill.

“It will virtually guarantee that it won’t pass,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), a member of the Gang of Eight negotiating group, told POLITICO in a brief interview. “This issue is a difficult enough issue as it is. I respect everyone’s views on it. But ultimately, if that issue is injected into this bill, the bill will fail and the coalition that helped put it together will fall apart.”

As the legislation moves through the Judiciary Committee and on to the Senate floor, many people will make pronouncements about things that must be kept in or kept out of the bill — but few issues worry the Gang of Eight as much as same sex partner rights.

The provision has the potential to immediately fracture the senators and a diverse alliance of backers that includes conservative evangelicals and liberal union chiefs. It’s the focus of an intense lobbying push this week by the United States Conference of the Catholic Bishops, the Southern Baptist Convention, the Human Rights Campaign and others as senators map out strategy ahead of the markup.

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The amendment, known as the Uniting American Families Act, would address an inequity in immigration law by permitting “permanent” partners of U.S. citizens or legal residents to apply for a green card. The term “permanent partner” is defined as someone who older than 18 and involved in a financially-interdependent, committed relationship.

The legislation could help as many as 40,000 same-sex couples, including some who have left the country in order to stay with their partners who can no longer live here legally. But Republicans are skittish about dealing with too many controversial issues all at once.

Democrats, led by Leahy and the party’s progressive allies, are expected to make the high-risk push because they aren’t convinced that Republicans would ultimately abandon the measure if it includes protections for same sex couples. The GOP made similar threats about the Violence Against Women Act before Congress passed a version that covered victims of domestic violence in same sex relationships, advocates point out.

“It’s not going to kill the bill,” Leahy said tersely last week when asked about the impact.

A Leahy spokesman said the senator has not yet decided to offer the amendment in committee, where the threshold for passage is a simple majority, rather than the 60-vote threshold on the Senate floor. But officials with the Human Rights Campaign and Immigration Equality said Leahy has made clear in meetings with advocates and Vermont constituents that he will move ahead with it.

Democrats in the Gang of Eight had pledged to band together with Republicans and work to defeat amendments that could imperil the bill.

Except, it seems, on this issue.

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) — the only Democratic members of the negotiating group on the Judiciary Committee — have signaled to gay rights advocates that they would support the amendment if it were offered.

Schumer is in a particularly tough spot. As a leader of the Gang of Eight, he’s trying to maintain as broad of a bipartisan coalition as possible so the legislation becomes unstoppable. If the Republicans make good on their threats, then his hope of a bill that wins 70-plus votes in the Senate — giving it more momentum going into the less friendly House — likely vanishes.

But Democrats in the Gang of Eight have already twice angered gay rights activists: first when the group released its immigration reform principles in January that excluded the same-sex protections, and again when the actual bill came out last month.

“I’ve gotten two ‘I’m sorry’ phone calls from Senator Schumer. I don’t want another one,” said Rachel B. Tiven, executive director of Immigration Equality, which advocates for equal immigration and asylum rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered individuals. “He has said it will happen in committee.”

Schumer refused to address the issue when approached last week in the Capitol.

“No comment,” he said, scolding a reporter for trying to get him to talk about it. “No comment. No comment.”

Democrats hold a 10-8 majority on the Judiciary Committee, so losing even one vote means the amendment would die.

Gay rights advocates say they are confident Schumer is on board. It’s actually Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) who is worrying them.

Although she has been strong on gay rights issues, Feinstein has not said whether she supports the measure. Given her lead role in negotiating a section of the immigration bill on agricultural worker visas, she could side with Republicans by claiming that the amendment jeopardizes the reform effort.

But Tiven and other advocates have been arguing to Democrats that Republicans, despite their warnings, won’t oppose immigration reform over this single issue. If they did, the GOP would be staking out a position that runs counter to a re-branding effort aimed at broadening its appeal, particularly among constituencies with growing clout.

“Alienating the majority of the country that sees LGBT equality as a done deal is a losing issue for them,” Tiven said.

But critics argue that it’s more complicated than gay rights advocates make it seem.

The debate isn’t settled in the Republican Party, according to polls, which show that a majority of its voters oppose gay marriage.

Immigration is more contentious and higher profile than the Violence Against Women Act, with the presidential ambitions of key supporters such as Rubio on the line. He could peel away from the bill, which means other conservatives would follow.

The bill could pass out of the Judiciary Committee on a party-line vote, but it would be hobbled by a lack of bipartisan support needed to propel it through Congress. The strategy for passing immigration reform rests largely on the theory that an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote in the Senate would force the House to take it up.

Faith organizations, which have proven influential in convincing Republican lawmakers to support immigration reform, warn that they would have little choice but to back out.

“We strongly would oppose the provision and it could could force us to reconsider our support for the bill,” said Kevin Appleby, director of the Catholic Bishops’ Office of Migration Policy and Public Affairs. “It immediately makes the bill a partisan bill and the bipartisan effort could begin to unravel.”

Alfonso Aguilar, executive director of the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles, issued a statement Wednesday calling on Schumer and Durbin to oppose the amendment.

“We hope that President Obama and Democrats in Congress are not willing to sacrifice the legalization of millions of undocumented immigrants for the sake of appeasing the gay lobby,” said Aguilar, who was one of about two dozen officials to stand behind the Gang of Eight during its press conference last month on the bill release. “Latinos are simply not going to stand for it.”

Some Democrats were hoping that gay rights advocates would agree to hold off until the bill hits the Senate floor. By then, the Supreme Court could have rendered the issue moot by issuing a decision on cases with the potential to strike down the Defense of Marriage Act and requiring the federal government to treat gay married couples that same as straight couples.

But advocates aren’t willing to wait. They don’t want to gamble on the Supreme Court ruling in their favor. And the chances of drumming up 60 votes to add it on the Senate floor are slim.

“Immigration reform is a once-in-a-generation event at this point,” Tiven said. “If LGBT families are left out of this bill, there may be no way to hold their family together in the United States.”