In announcing his retirement at the end of 2018, House Judiciary chairman Bob Goodlatte said his goals in his final year in office include “bolstering enforcement of our immigration laws and reforming the legal immigration system.” Goodlatte, a Virginia Republican, is the sponsor of divisive legislation to create a year-round H-2C agricultural guestworker program to replace seasonal H-2A visas.
Goodlatte, chairman of the House Agriculture Committee a decade ago, said in a letter to constituents that he was nearing the six-year limit set by House Republicans on chairmanships, and at age 65, “this is a natural stepping off point.” In a teleconference with reporters, Goodlatte said the political climate “didn’t play a role” in his decision, according to the Washington Post. Democrats won all the statewide races in an off-year election two days before Goodlatte’s announcement. The Post said Goodlatte might have faced a challenge in the GOP primary in 2018: “As an elected official for more than a quarter-century, he has been a target of activists with disdain for entrenched politicians.”
“Conservative immigration activists will lose one of their own next fall, when Virginia Congressman Bob Goodlatte retires from Capitol Hill and vacates his seat as chairman of the powerful House Judiciary Committee, where he has passed a slate of immigration bills that closely align with the Trump administration’s hard-line agenda on the issue,” said the Washington Examiner.
The Judiciary Committee approved Goodlatte’s H-2C guestworker bill on a party-line vote of 17-16 last month, with five Tea Party-backed Republicans not voting. Democrats on the committee said the bill was too extreme. Under the bill, the H-2C program for the first time would include meatpackers, dairies and the timber industry in an ag-visa program. It would relieve employers of the responsibility to provide transportation and housing for visa holders but allow farmworkers to quit and look for other work, once the E-Verify network covers all employers.