In The News

On Friday, Congressman Huizenga spoke with the Ludington Daily News about President Obama's latest executive action, how Congress will respond, and what bipartisan steps can be taken to begin to fix our nation's broken immigration system. Below are excerpts from the interview, which is available in it's entirety here.

Huizenga says Congress is considering response to Obama's immigration executive order

By Steve Begnoche - Sun Nov 23, 2014.

Congressman Bill Huizenga, R-Zeeland, says members of Congress are trying to understand what exactly President Barack Obama’s immigration executive order means and just how far it goes before deciding how to respond. ...

 

He [Huizenga], like most Republicans, questions if the president has the authority to do what he did, saying that gets very iffy when it comes to issuing work permits.

Speaker of the House John Boehner, R-Ohio, Friday filed a lawsuit challenging the president’s authority on health care that could be expanded to include the immigration decision, Huizenga said. The Republican-controlled House had authorized the lawsuit earlier, but Boehner waited until the immigration order to file it.

Huizenga said that even Obama previously questioned the authority of the president to order changes. “I agree with him earlier when he said he doesn’t have the authority to do this. He or someone helped change his mind,” Huizenga said. “That really is the heart of the problem. The president is trying to go forward without any kind of legislative process.” ...

Huizenga said immigration reform is needed and the current immigration law presents problems to agriculture in west Michigan and high tech industries.

“My preference is to go after it in a step-by-step process,” he said. One issue that needs to be tackled is border security. Huizenga said he agreed with Obama’s call Thursday night for higher pay for border patrols.

“There are some things we aren’t that far apart on,” he said. “We have to go in fix the ag part of this in west Michigan. There are not enough visas to allow people to move back and forth freely to serve the needs here. We have to fix the high tech side“We still have the thorny issue of what do we do with the people who are here."

Read the entire article here on the Ludington Daily News website.