Paul Ryan is still reluctantly mulling a bid for speaker. But his adversaries on the far right want to discredit his campaign before it even begins — and they’re using Ryan’s extensive pro-immigration record as their key weapon.



From his days battling a restrictive California immigration ballot measure in the early 1990s, to his quiet efforts the past two years to help build GOP consensus for immigration reform, Ryan has a lengthy history of pushing for an overhaul that runs counter to the most conservative wings of his own party.



There will be a “major intraparty battle over immigration if Paul comes forward,” predicted Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), a well-known immigration hard-liner, in an interview this week. “And a majority of the conference is on my side of this argument.”



No matter who ultimately succeeds outgoing Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), there is a near-zero chance that Congress will take up comprehensive immigration changes during the remainder of President Barack Obama's administration. But Ryan’s business-centric approach in favor of boosting legal immigration and letting undocumented immigrants “get right with the law” are anathema to the far right who believe Ryan is no different than Boehner himself, who has fruitlessly tried since 2012 to persuade House Republicans to pass reforms.





Indeed, Ryan’s track record on immigration runs at least two decades deep. And during Congress' failed attempt at comprehensive reform the past two years, Ryan wielded significant influence behind the scenes — from keeping tabs on closed-door House negotiations to meeting privately with Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), a key leader in the Senate on an immigration overhaul.



Schumer and Ryan shared a similar goal — sweeping changes to the nation’s immigration laws — and the two men struck up a casual relationship over at least five secret talks in Schumer’s hideaway at the Capitol to discuss how to get immigration reform done during the 113th Congress.



The two influential lawmakers never negotiated actual policy — Ryan would shut down any such talk. But he assured Schumer the House was working on an immigration package that would be done in their own fashion. Schumer, in turn, would insist Senate Democrats — then in the majority — would have to be part of the conversation, since no bill would get to Obama without their backing.



“He thought it was in the economic interest of America” to do immigration reform, said a person with close knowledge of the discussions between Ryan and Schumer.



Ryan is not even officially in the race for speaker, and is only grudgingly considering the option. And during those long-ago immigration conversations with Schumer, Ryan would remark that he would never want Boehner’s job, the person with knowledge of the talks said.



But now, Ryan’s immigration stances are drawing fire from conservatives both on and off Capitol Hill. For instance, King said he would not support Ryan for speaker, noting that he has long opposed leadership candidates who are “pro-amnesty” and that he is still backing Rep. Daniel Webster (R-Fla.) to take charge of the House. Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks, another House Republican who holds hard-line views on immigration, shared similar sentiments, telling Fox News earlier this week that he would need assurances from Ryan he would not push for immigration reform if he were to become speaker.



Once the Ryan-for-speaker boomlet took flight in earnest last week, conservative talk show host Mark Levin tweeted: “NOT SO FAST! Paul Ryan an amnesty advocate, along with his buddy Luis Gutierrez.”






And advocacy groups pushing for more restrictive immigration policies already are fretting over a prospective Speaker Ryan, pointing to his two decades of policy work aimed at bringing more legal immigrants into the United States.



There are other conservative grievances against Ryan, to be sure. Hard-right opponents of Ryan have pointed to his dealings with Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington to craft a two-year budget deal that boosted some government spending. Ryan voted for the $700 billion bank bailout at the height of the 2008 financial crisis, and he is an unabashed promoter of free trade.



But immigration, in the eyes of some hard-liners, is where Ryan has committed his gravest political sins.



Ryan’s interest in the issue began in the early 1990s, when he was a young staffer working under former Rep. Jack Kemp (R-N.Y.) at the conservative think tank Empower America. There, the men worked to whip up opposition to Proposition 187, a controversial 1994 ballot measure in California that would deny key public benefits to immigrants here illegally.



The measure passed, but was ultimately never enacted due to court challenges. And the GOP’s advocacy of Proposition 187 has been widely blamed for damaging the party’s standing with California Latinos — a message Ryan repeated in a 2013 interview, where he recounted his efforts to kill the measure.



Both Ryan and Kemp — a well-known pro-immigration Republican — were concerned that Proposition 187 would “make it so that Latino voters would not hear the other messages of empowerment,” Ryan said during the interview with EWTN, a Catholic television network.



In 1995, Ryan became legislative director to then-Kansas Rep. Sam Brownback, another Republican who has a long history on immigration reform. A Hill battle over immigration flared anew in 1996, when the GOP-led Congress began considering a far-reaching measure targeting both legal and illegal immigration.



Working under Brownback, Ryan was one of the masterminds behind a series of “Dear Colleague” letters from the Kansas Republican, and former Reps. Howard Berman (D-Calif.) and Dick Chrysler (R-Mich.) that warned against a restrictive immigration bill, from then-Sen. Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.) and Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), who remains one of the staunchest foes of immigration in the House.



"Smith was getting a free ride because he knew immigration law so much better than most of the other members," Ryan said in a 1996 interview with Wired magazine. "Once people learned what was actually in the bill, we were able to peel them off, one by one."



Anti-immigration proponents also blame Ryan and his allies for an amendment from Brownback, Berman and Chrysler that killed provisions in the 1996 restrictive immigration measure to dramatically reduce the number of legal immigrants allowed into the United States. The amendment passed, 238-183.



“He has always worked for the crony capitalists on immigration,” said Roy Beck, the president of Numbers USA, which works to limit immigration into the United States. “He was a young guy [during the 1990s fight]. But that was the ideology he learned.”



The politics of immigration ebbed and flowed during Ryan’s years on Capitol Hill, and Ryan has taken some hard-line positions, too. He voted in favor of an illegal immigration crackdown bill in 2005 from Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, a fellow Wisconsin Republican — legislation that bolstered both interior enforcement policies and border security provisions but triggered a wave of demonstrations nationwide protesting the bill.



But that same year, Ryan endorsed legislation from Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.), and then-Arizona GOP Reps. Jim Kolbe and Jeff Flake (now a senator) — a complete overhaul of the immigration system that would legalize undocumented immigrants, and was backed by Sens. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) in the Senate.





Ryan “was a co-sponsor of the bill that Gutierrez was in favor of,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors stricter migration policies. “For me, that tells you everything.”



Gutierrez saw an opportunity to revive the ties with Ryan over immigration in late 2012, when the liberal Illinois Democrat and outspoken immigration advocate approached the Republican vice-presidential nominee, who had just come off a stinging national electoral loss, at the House gym. The two men — who had bonded over their mutual Catholic faith, one aide said — would later jointly appear at pro-immigration events in Chicago, where Ryan would press the economic case for reform.



In addition to that public effort, Ryan was involved behind the scenes. He was never part of a bipartisan gang of House negotiators who ultimately failed to come up with a comprehensive bill in 2013. But Ryan still gave help when needed, like when the group needed help with some budgetary impacts of policies they were considering.



Later, in 2014, Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) was the public face of the House GOP push on immigration for much of the early part of the year. Meanwhile, Ryan was a quiet partner as the Florida Republican worked assiduously on a bill — and Ryan was ready to defend the measure publicly after it was released.



But in June 2014, then-House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) lost in a stunning primary election that was blamed in part due to Cantor’s tentative support for immigration reform. Private support from GOP lawmakers for Diaz-Balart’s effort, which at one point got soft commitments from at least 120 House Republicans, evaporated.



And Ryan, talking with Schumer once again, made it clear the chances of doing immigration reform in the House after Cantor’s loss were gone. According to the person with knowledge of the discussions, Ryan told Schumer that he didn’t have any “juice” to push House Republicans on immigration after Cantor’s defeat.



In this new Congress, Ryan has thrown himself into his new position as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, a dream job for him. As immigration reform fell off Congress’ radar this year, Ryan has said little on the issue.



But immigration is an undeniable part of Ryan’s policy record. Advocates who have met with Ryan describe him as a thoughtful person who was well-versed in the details of policy and outlined the economic rationale in pushing for an overhaul but also the moral imperative of doing reform.



The twin arguments are “a combination of who he is as a person,” said one person who has sat in on immigration meetings with Ryan.



“The reason that anti-immigration groups are panicking is because even in the midst of disagreement, conservatives all respect Ryan as a thoughtful person in general,” said David Bier, a former immigration aide to Rep. Raul Labrador (R-Idaho) who is now director of immigration policy at the libertarian Niskanen Center. “He has this Reagan-esque vision of a tolerant GOP that upsets these groups.”