McCarthy, Labrador About Equal on Support for Amnesty

"A Path to Citizenship"

• Let's not pretend.  The GOP will vote for some form of legalization.  What really matters is if there is true and mandatory enforcement at the business level and the jailing of businessmen who break the law.  If illegals cannot get jobs then you don't even need a border fence.

Majority Leader Eric Cantor was deposed in a shocking primary upset largely over his support for providing amnesty to illegal aliens brought to the U.S. as minors. However, in the campaign to replace him, anti-amnesty advocates say both candidates are largely coming from the same place Cantor was.

Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and Rep. Raul Labrador (R-ID) both support legalization for the undocumented immigrants already in the country and are largely in line with establishment thinking on the issue.

“They are both what I would call high immigration guys. They are inclined to see the benefits of immigration, not the costs. They’re inclined to be sympathetic to employers who want more workers and not as inclined to see the general wage stagnation across the U.S. economy and the enormous number of working-age people not working,” Center for Immigration Studies director of research Steven Camarota explained to Breitbart News.

Labrador has a nuanced relationship with immigration reform. A tea party lawmaker and an immigration lawyer by trade, he was a part of the bipartisan Gang of Eight in the House working on a reform agreement before he backed out of the group last June over a dispute dealing with healthcare for the eleven million undocumented immigrants.

“Anything we do is going to be called amnesty by any number of people. The reality is that we have to do something about the people that are here; we’ve got to figure out how to do it fairly, so we can solve the immigration problem,” Labrador told Roll Call in February 2013. “You’re going to get a majority of Republicans to support something that does something fair.”

Labrador’s website explains that he believes in border security and enforcement before any legalization but adds that he thinks 2014 is not the time for immigration reform because of House Republicans’ lack of confidence Obama will enforce such legislation and pressure for the Senate-passed immigration bill.

A statement on his website, however, indicates he's optimistic about how quickly Obama can repair trust, saying “early 2015” will mark an optimal time to address the issue.

In January, House Whip Kevin McCarthy was the first member of House GOP leadership to support legal status for undocumented immigrants. McCarthy does not support granting full citizenship to aliens.

“People understand that the immigration system today doesn’t work, that you have 42 percent of the people who are here illegally came here legally on a visa,” McCarthy said. “You have to reform the visa program. The chain migration system doesn’t work. You need a guest workers program.”

“[Labrador] is an immigration lawyer; I think he’s inclined to see the benefits of immigration and not the costs,” Camarota said.

Overall, according to Camarota, the pair are representative of the “echo chamber in D.C.” that is less concerned about the possible harm of high immigration levels than the benefits. “I do not think that they are different in that both of them are part of that elite echo chamber on immigration.”