Immigration Reform 2013: White House Says House Republican Plan 'Cruel Hypocrisy"

Dan Pfeiffer, a senior advisor to President Barack Obama on strategy and communications, lashed out at House Republicans over Twitter on Tuesday morning over a bill the GOP-headed House Judiciary Committee is scheduled to consider. In his post, Pfeiffer attached a link to an op-ed published in California’s bilingual newspaper La Opinion and added, “La Opinion nails the cruel hypocrisy of the GOP immigration plan: allow some kids to stay but deport their parents.” Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlotte (R-Va.) and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), who will sponsor the bill, are calling it the “Kids Act”, would extend legal status and a path to citizenship to many of the nation’s young undocumented immigrants who were brought here illegally as children by their parents. It would offer no such legalizing measures to their parents.

The op-ed, entitled “Cruel and Indecent”, quotes Cantor as saying the Kids Act was a matter of “decency and compassion” before going on to point out House Republicans’ previous rejection of the DREAM Act – which would have granted conditional residency status to young undocumented immigrants and put them on the track to citizenship – and recent symbolic vote to defund DACA, an Obama administration order which protected that group from deportation. The article, which is not attributed to an author, adds that,

“In reality, using Cantor's own words, it is cruel and indecent to think that the young Dreamers would be satisfied with a measure that protects themselves but simultaneously deports their parents.

RELATED: Obama Tells Spanish-Languate TV A Path To Citizenship 'Needs To Be Part Of The Bill'

“Likewise, it is the height of hypocrisy to posture oneself as representing family integrity, while heartlessly promoting actions that divide the family home, whose human worth knows no borders.”

RELATED: House Gang Of Seven Plan To Include Path To Citizenship, With Conditions To Appease Republicans

The House Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on the bill on Tuesday. The chamber’s Republican leadership, including House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), is in favor of legalization measures for young undocumented, but on the subject of citizenship for a much broader swath of the nation’s 11 million undocumented, it has either come out against it or kept mum. Boehner has refused to introduce the Senate’s comprehensive reform bill, which the Congressional Budget Office estimates would make about 8 million formerly undocumented people eligible for legal status. He says his party will craft small legislation which addresses one issue at a time.

RELATED: Crucial Month Nearing, McCain Admits 'We're Not Winning' On Immigration

Democrats and immigrant advocates have blasted the Kids Act, saying it would separate families and condemn parents to the status of second-class citizens. The Obama administration has also thrown itself into a campaign for a comprehensive immigration reform, with the president going on Spanish-language television stations last week to say a path to citizenship of the size the Senate’s bill envisioned “needs to be part of the bill”.