Mia Love only US House member from Utah to vote against hardline immigration bill


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SALT LAKE CITY — Rep. Mia Love, the only one of Utah's four U.S. House members voting against a hardline immigration bill that failed to pass Thursday, made a plea from the House floor for a compromise bill that may also be in trouble.

"It hits a sweet spot, allowing us to both follow the rule of law and show compassion to those who seek the freedom and blessings this country has to offer," the Republican 4th District representative said.

Love spoke of being the daughter of Haitian immigrants and said the bill deserves support because "the practice of separating loving families from their children at the border has been heartbreaking to watch."

She has helped seek support for a provision added to the compromise bill to allow families caught crossing the border illegally or seeking asylum to stay together in detention.

President Donald Trump issued an executive order to halt family separations at the border on Wednesday but called for a congressional fix to the crisis, resulting from his administration's recently implemented zero-tolerance policy on border offenses.

But the remaining immigration bill in the House, initially expected to be voted on Thursday as well, was first delayed until Friday and now won't be taken up until next week as GOP leaders scramble for votes.

Andrew Roberts, the campaign manager for Love's Democratic opponent in November, Salt Lake County Mayor Ben McAdams, said the congresswoman "once again is all talk and no action."

Roberts said Love is "desperately trying to cover her tracks" on her past immigration efforts and recently chose to fundraise with House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., rather than seek support for a discharge petition.

Love was part of a small group of moderate Republicans behind the seldom-used procedural manuever that would have forced a vote on several immigration bills had enough House members from both parties signed on.

Her fellow Utah Republican Reps. John Curtis, Chris Stewart and Rob Bishop all voted Wednesday for the more conservative of the two immigration bills being considered in the House.

The bill, known as the Securing America's Future Act, failed to pass 193-231 with all of the Democrats in the House and 41 of the Republicans who hold the majority voting against it.

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Love said in a statement it failed to provide a pathway to citizenship for adults who were brought into the country illegally as children in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA, whose status is currently in limbo.

The bill also "sharply reduces immigration levels," Love said. "I felt that it failed to strike the right balance between law and humanity, and could ultimately have undesired impacts on individuals, families and our economy.”

Curtis, who is waiting to see the final version of the compromise bill before deciding whether to support it, said in a statement he voted for the more conservative bill Thursday because "it represented an important first step" on immigration reform.

The bill "was far from perfect," he said, but dealt with key concerns such as border security, "ending the visa lottery and improving access to programs for migrant and seasonal workers, and providing certainty for DACA recipients."

Bishop is "looking forward to voting for the Border Security and Immigration Reform Act," which includes language from Bishop "to better allow border patrol agents to do their job on federally owned borderlands," his spokesman, Lee Lonsberry, said.

Lonsberry said Bishop was a co-sponsor of the bill that failed Thursday, which also contained similar language on access to federal lands on the U.S. border with Mexico.

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There is money in the bill for the border wall that was a major part of Trump's presidential campaign. A new poll released Thursday shows a majority of Utahns don't support a wall along the southern border.

The UtahPolicy.com poll found 55 percent of likely Utah voters oppose building the wall while 42 percent support its construction. Forty percent strongly oppose the wall compared to 25 percent who strongly support it.

The poll was conducted by Dan Jones & Associates for the online political news service May 15-25, 2018, of 615 likely Utah voters and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percent.

In the Senate Thursday, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on immigration that "separating children from their parents is inhumane" and called for help for immigrant families already affected by the policy.

"If we can resist the temptation to run to extremes on this issue, I believe we can find one quickly," Hatch said. "We also need to ensure that children who have been separated from their parents are reunited."

The senator said he supports two bills in the Senate that deal with keeping families intact while immigration proceedings are pending and increasing the number of immigration judges to speed up that process.

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UtahPolitics
Lisa Riley Roche

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