Suozzi pushes bipartisan fix to U.S. immigration policy during high-stakes election year

WASHINGTON — A new coalition of stakeholders in immigration policy has begun to pull together bipartisan legislation to secure the border, fix the broken asylum system and modernize immigration law, Rep. Tom Suozzi said Tuesday.

Suozzi (D-Glen Cove) said he and Rep. Morgan Luttrell (R-Texas) kicked off the new effort last week with a roundtable meeting attended by 50 immigration advocates, business associations and others engaged in the issue in person in Washington and another 70 on Zoom. 

The goal, Suozzi told Newsday, is to build a broad-based national bipartisan coalition and to cobble together existing bipartisan immigration legislation that lawmakers already have negotiated into a package that sponsors could introduce as early as September. 

“The U.S. faces an immigration crisis because too many politicians have spent too many years 'weaponizing' immigration policy, fighting across the aisle — but haven’t done a thing to fix it,” Suozzi said.

Suozzi acknowledged the group must contend with the daunting challenge of finding common ground with Democrats and Republicans in a bitterly divided Congress — in an election year where immigration has become a lightning-rod issue for voters..

 The new initiative launched by Suozzi and Luttrell drew praise from the Alliance for a New Immigration Consensus, a 40-member group that includes the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Immigration Forum and Catholic Charities.

 “We appreciate Congressmen Suozzi and Luttrell’s courage in starting this conversation," the group said in a statement. “The congressmen’s starting point is spot-on: bringing more order to the challenges at the border and in our asylum system by increasing security and upholding human dignity.”

 The statement added, “They also recognize that we have to update our immigration system so that we can reduce pressure at the border, meet our labor needs to strengthen our economy, keep inflation in check, and give workers and employers greater stability.”

Suozzi, a moderate Democrat, said he reached out to Luttrell, a conservative Republican, to work on immigration policies as members of the House Homeland Security Committee, which has oversight over immigration and border issues.

“We are working together to find the best way forward for our country on these important border security and immigration issues,” Luttrell said.

Also attending the meeting last week were Reps. Vicente Gonzalez Jr. (D-Texas), Don Bacon (R-Neb.) and Jimmy Panetta (D-Calif.).

Democrats have turned to Suozzi on immigration after he reclaimed his seat in a special election in February by directly taking on the issue of the overwhelming border crossings and other immigration issues —  instead of avoiding it — during his campaign.

The White House and Democratic leaders have pointed to Suozzi’s campaign as a model for Democrats to address what remains one of the most politically fraught issues for them.

In May, Suozzi and Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) called on President Joe Biden to issue executive actions to bring order to the border and to give legal work permits to the 1.1 million immigrant spouses married to U.S. citizens.

In June, Biden issued executive actions to bar migrants who cross the border unlawfully from receiving asylum when encounters are high and to create a new process that allows noncitizen spouses and children to apply for lawful permanent residence in the United States.