Byron York's Daily Memo: The GOP fight that stopped Trump's immigration plan

S E E D E D   C O N T E N T

THE GOP FIGHT THAT STOPPED TRUMP'S IMMIGRATION PLAN. 

It didn't happen.  Now, one of Trump's strongest supporters on Capitol Hill, Republican Rep. Jim Jordan, is out with a  new memoir  ,  Do What You Said You Would Do , out Nov. 23, that describes those months when GOP lawmakers fought over competing visions of immigration reform. The battle was intense, it was passionate, and it came to nothing. No stricter immigration laws were passed, and there was no significant funding for a wall. For that failure, Jordan points the finger of blame straight at then-Speaker Ryan.

"Paul Ryan is not where the American people are,"  Jordan writes. "Paul Ryan's position on immigration is the same as the positions of the National Chamber of Commerce." In the world of conservative immigration policy activists, accusing someone of siding with the Chamber of Commerce is about as harsh as it gets.

As Jordan tells it,  Ryan sabotaged Republican immigration reform by refusing to support a bill that the large majority of Republicans supported, instead pushing a weaker bill that the chamber supported. The result was that, facing united Democratic opposition, neither Republican bill passed.

The bill promoted by Jordan and his colleagues  in the House Freedom Caucus would have "ended family-based chain migration apart from spouses and children," Jordan writes. "It contained mandatory E-Verify language for employers and eliminated the visa lottery ... [it] also defunded sanctuary cities and appropriated $30 billion for construction of the wall." The bill, Jordan argues, "was consistent with the message of the 2016 election."

The bill supported by Ryan  would also have funded the wall, albeit with $25 billion. "But it did nothing else to address the problems we were elected to solve," Jordan writes. "It had no language to address chain migration, E-Verify, or sanctuary cities ... [It] also created a renewable six-year legal status for up to 2.4 million illegal immigrants and gave those individuals a path to legal citizenship." Finally, while the bill ended the visa lottery, it "reallocated those visas to amnesty recipients."

"Which bill do you think Speaker Ryan supported?"   Jordan asks  . "You already know the answer."

Ryan, Jordan charges,  did not want to allow the House to vote on the Freedom Caucus bill. He did so only after the group threatened to sink a big, must-pass farm bill if they didn't get a vote on immigration. And then, the speaker declined to put pressure on — whip, as they say on Capitol Hill — any Republicans to vote for it. And still, the conservative bill got 193 votes — a solid majority of the 241 Republicans in the House at that time. Ryan did push for the other bill — what Jordan calls the Chamber of Commerce bill — but in the end, it got only 121 votes.

"Why push for a bill  that was one hundred votes short of passing instead of a bill that got 193 votes and therefore was just a few votes shy of passing?" Jordan asks. "You already know why. Paul Ryan doesn't want the legislation President Trump and the American people supported."

The Jordan-Ryan clash

In the end, Trump found other ways

It was a crisis that is sure to be repeated, probably in the near future.  But the story might have been different had Republicans not been so divided in that 2018 debate.