In rare move, GOP holds its own hearing

Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee’s immigration panel yesterday held a hearing on the impact of immigration on low-skilled minority workers, a rare step prompted by a dispute over witnesses.

As the star witness, Republican panel members called T. Willard Fair, a self-described civil rights activist who called amnesty for illegal immigrants “a slap in the face for black Americans” in newspaper ads that ran last week.

{mosads}Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), the panel’s ranking member, cited House rules to request the hearing after subcommittee Chairwoman Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) declined to allow what King asserted was commonplace rule-bending to accommodate the minority’s choice of witnesses for a hearing held last Thursday.

“Longstanding committee practice provides that the minority party be allowed, at least, one witness for every panel. That tradition was violated by the draconian ruling of the Chair,” King wrote in a statement to publicize the hearing.

Lofgren denied that any rule or practice had been broken. “I don’t think he understands the rules,” she said, referring to King.

However, she agreed with King that, under House rules, the minority could call its own hearing: “They have a right to this hearing under the rules and I follow the rules.”

Judiciary Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) appeared at the hearing,  addressing the witnesses in his opening remarks:
“We do not have a bill, so  everything you say here is being examined so it can be included in our final work product.”

In addition to Fair, who is the president of the Urban League of Greater Miami, two witnesses critical of granting amnesty to illegal immigrants testified. They were Steve Camarota, the director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, and Roy Beck, the executive director of Numbers USA.

According to accounts from both parties, panel Republicans requested a private-sector witness for the government panel in last week’s hearing. Lofgren refused, citing what she said was the committee’s longstanding practice of not allowing such witnesses on government panels.

Republicans then asked to have two witnesses on the second, non-governmental panel instead of a witness for each panel. Logfren again refused. “We had a government panel and the ratio was three majority witnesses to one minority witness, and it was that way for years,” she explained.

After the hearing, King denied that the committee had any hard-and-fast rule against mingling private- and public-sector witnesses on a panel. He cited a hearing last year in which officials from the Department of Homeland Security and the private sector testified on the same panel.

In his opening remarks, King said that he is reluctant to call Bush administration witnesses to testify because they are
unlikely to stray from the White House’s support for providing illegal immigrants a pathway to citizenship.

Fair testified that legalizing illegal immigrants would create hardship for already struggling young black males. “If you talk about amnesty … then you create another set of problems,” he said.

Republicans allowed the minority to hold at least one hearing of the full House Judiciary Committee during the 12 years they were in power, both minority and majority committee staff recalled.

At the hearing, a few members tussled over their recollections of how the minority was treated under Republican rule. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) declared in the hearing that Democrats on the panel “could never be heard” when they were in the minority.

Rep. Dan Lungren (R-Calif.) took issue with her comments, saying he had chaired a panel hearing on behalf of Democratic members lat year. “Fairness is fairness,” he declared.

“Not on immigration it wasn’t,” Jackson Lee shot back.