WASHINGTON — Starting with a hearing in San Diego on Wednesday, House members are launching a summerlong sparring match over how best to untangle and reorder the nation's thicket of immigration laws.
Alongside that debate, Democrats and Republicans will wage a second struggle -- to see which party can best wring a political advantage from the hearings as the November elections draw closer.
The San Diego hearing is a stage for Republicans to highlight the dangers of cross-border smuggling. They will argue that the Senate immigration bill would not adequately protect against either threat.
Also Wednesday, in Philadelphia, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) will counter the House inquiry with his own hearing defending the Senate's broader approach to immigration.
Congressional hearings are usually held to explore an issue and search for solutions. House Republicans have been frank in saying that their hearings, in July and August, are a negotiating tool with two goals: to highlight perceived flaws in the Senate bill and to build public support for their own enforcement-only legislation.
"Pointing out what I would describe as the inadequacies in the Reid-Kennedy bill will help strengthen our hand as we move toward a compromise with the Senate," said House Majority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), who used the names of two Democratic senators, Harry Reid of Nevada and Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, to refer to -- and deride -- the bipartisan bill.
Democrats say the House hearings are political theater to rally core GOP voters with biased witness lists and loaded topic headings.
Even so, the minority party is just as enthusiastic to start them.
In San Diego and the three or four hearings to follow, Democrats say they plan to ask why Republicans are spending the summer talking about immigration instead of working on it.
And Democrats say the hearings offer the perfect opportunity to point out that if the U.S.-Mexico border is porous, if agents are underfunded, and if workplace immigration law is rarely enforced, much of that has happened under six years of Republican rule.
Democrats in Congress -- and President Bush -- largely support the Senate bill, which includes not only enforcement measures, but a guest worker program and a way for most of the country's illegal immigrants to attain citizenship.
