Rep. Goodlatte On Board John Boehner's Amnesty Drive

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) is set to push for full-blown amnesty this year per the marching orders the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has given GOP leaders in Congress. He will make this announcement in an interview set to air Sunday on Telemundo.

“Well, we made a lot of progress in 2013 in terms of passing four bills through the Judiciary Committee, one through the Homeland Security Committee,” Goodlatte said when asked what will happen in 2014 regarding immigration legislation, according to a transcript of the interview obtained by Breitbart News. 

Holding a lot of hearings, getting a lot of focus on solving the immigration problem and all three parts of it: Enforcement, legal immigration reform and finding the appropriate legal status for people who are not lawfully here. Now, we’re trying to find a way to give the members of the House a way to see how all these things would work in our step by step approach.

Specifically, Goodlatte was referring to the so-called immigration “principles” that Rebecca Tallent, the pro-amnesty adviser to House Speaker John Boehner, is overseeing. Goodlatte confirmed that Boehner’s office is drafting the amnesty “principles” but that he and others in the House are advising the Speaker’s team on the matter.

“We think one way to do that may be to put forward a set of principles,” Goodlatte said.

So the Speaker is taking the lead in doing that. Of course, I and others are being consulted on that. And we hope that it will provide something that will galvanize the kind of support that’s necessary to understand that if we can do immigration enforcement and have–and not just on the border, but interior enforcement.

Goodlatte pushed for interior enforcement because, he said, 35 to 40 percent of the “people who are here illegally entered the country legally on visitors’ visas, student visas, business visas, visa waivers.” 

“And they’re from every country on the face of the globe,” Goodlatte said. “We need to have that interior enforcement.”

Goodlatte said if the House passes an interior enforcement and a border security bill, he has no problem granting amnesty to illegal aliens.

“If we can have a way to get that up and operating, I see no reason why we can’t also have an agreement that shows how people who are not lawfully here can be able to be lawfully here,” Goodlatte said. “Able to live here, work here, travel to and from their home country. Be able to own a business, pay their taxes. And that is how we’re trying to outline a way to resolve this as one of several of the steps in this step by step approach.”

Goodlatte’s argument is essentially the same as President Barack Obama’s plea to House Republicans for an amnesty package to fulfill his top second-term agenda item.

As Sens. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) and Mike Lee (R-UT) wrote in an exclusive op-ed for Breitbart News last fall, real immigration reform will only occur when interior enforcement and border security legislation is passed and implemented before any other steps are even considered in the U.S. Congress. Only after President Obama’s administration actually secures the border and enforces the nation’s interior immigration laws would any visa, legalization, or legal immigration reform legislation be acceptable.