Immigration bill hearing set for N.H.

House panel looks at Senate proposal

By James Vaznis, Globe Staff

The House Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing today in Concord, N.H., on a Senate immigration reform bill that would provide a path to citizenship for most of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the country.

The 10 a.m. hearing at the State House, which is the 18th in a series of 21 hearings nationwide that began last month, has been roundly denounced by Democrats and immigrant rights advocates as an effort by House Republicans to promote an anti-immigration agenda in the weeks leading up to the congressional elections.

``It's a taxpayer-funded road show," said Representative Marty Meehan, a Judiciary Committee member who will be driving from his hometown of Lowell to the hearing this morning. ``House Republicans are staging theatrical hearings instead of rolling up their sleeves and sitting down with the Senate to work on a compromise."

The hearings are considered unusual because they are taking place after both the House and Senate have each passed their own immigration reform bills. The House bill focuses exclusively on beefing up border security, while the Senate bill goes further by including a guest worker program for immigrants to work legally in the United States as well as pave a path to citizenship.

Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., the Wisconsin Republican who chairs the judiciary committee, defended the hearings.

``I don't think they are a waste of taxpayers' money," Sensenbrenner said, ``and I think taxpayers expect lawmakers to go away from Washington to find out what people think and to take testimony."

Yesterday morning, immigration advocates from Massachusetts and New Hampshire criticized the hearings at a press conference in Concord. They will gather again today at 9 a.m. for a rally at St. Paul's church across from the State House. The Concord hearing is the only one scheduled to be held in New England.

``This is immigration politics, not immigration policy, that is being discussed," Ali Noorani, executive director of Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition, said in a telephone interview. ``House leadership have gone from one corner of the country to another to conjure up hatred and fear about immigration in the country."

The public isn't allowed to testify. Sensenbrenner said that at the judiciary committee hearings Republicans will choose three witnesses to testify and Democrats choose two.

Today's list includes New Hampshire state Representative Andrew Renzullo, who sponsored legislation earlier this year that would have restricted immigrant rights; John Young, a New Boston apple orchard owner who is advocating for more temporary visas to bring foreign workers here; Steven Camarota, for the Center of Immigration Studies; Peter Gadiel, president of the 9/11 Families for a Secure America; and John Lewy, a doctor with the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Renzullo, in an telephone interview yesterday, said the Senate bill will ``bankrupt the country," citing a 10-year estimate by the Congressional Budget Office that put the cost of the Senate bill at $127 billion.

``It's outrageous," said Renzullo, adding that allowing undocumented immigrants to become citizens ``rewards illegal behavior."