WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Congress
can block President Barack Obama from using federal immigration fees to
issue permits for millions of undocumented immigrants to stay and work
in the United States, according to a congressional research memo
released on Wednesday.
The memo from the non-partisan Congressional Research Service to
Republican Senator Jeff Sessions could provide a boost to him and other
conservatives who are pushing for a December budget confrontation with
Obama to try to stop his executive order overhauling the U.S.
immigration system.
A plan to deny such funds in a must-pass federal spending bill next
month, as part of a Republican effort to fight Obama's immigration move,
could heighten the risk of another government shutdown.
A plan to deny such
funds in a must-pass federal spending bill next month, as part of a
Republican effort to fight Obama's immigration move, could heighten the
risk of another government shutdown.
House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers, a more
moderate Republican, has argued against such a strategy, pushing
instead for a spending bill that fully funds government agencies through
September 2015. He has said that simply "defunding" immigration
agencies would have little effect because the primary agency that would
process the applications could still operate on the fees it collects.
But the Congressional Research Service said lawmakers
could halt operations of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
agency by including language explicitly prohibiting the use of funds by a
specific agency for a specific purpose."If a statute were enacted which prohibited appropriated funds from being used for some specified purposes, then the relevant funds would be unavailable to be obligated or expended for those purposes," the research service said in the memo.
It went on to say that such legislative language would
also apply to funds collected through fees but noted that courts could
have different interpretations.