By Raul Labrador and Bob Goodlatte As Americans, we have a long tradition of helping refugees who, through no fault of their own, are fleeing war and persecution and wish to become contributing members of our society. It's a moral calling and one of the things that makes our country great. However, the most important factor when it comes to America's refugee program is ensuring the safety and security of the American people. There are already documented cases of terrorists infiltrating the program, and with ISIS vowing to exploit it further, the time for congressional action is now. This week, the House Judiciary Committee began considering legislation we introduced to fix our broken refugee program. Our bill implements stronger vetting, gives states and communities the power to decline resettlement, and lowers the annual refugee ceiling to the number recommended by President Trump. It's a smart bill that is worthy of bipartisan support. To be clear, we support America's refugee program. But it needs to be modernized to keep pace with the security challenges of today's world. According to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, more than 300 people who came to the United States as refugees are under active terror-related investigations by the FBI. Several refugees have already been arrested on federal terrorism charges. For example, two Iraqi refugees admitted to the United States in 2009 -- Mohanad Shareef Hammadi and Waad Ramadan Alwan -- confessed to using improvised explosive devices against U.S. soldiers in Iraq and sending weapons and money to al Qaeda in Iraq for the purpose of killing American soldiers. Last year, two refugees from Iraq -- Omar Faraj Saeed Al Hardan and Aws Mohammed Younis Al-Jayab -- were arrested for attempting to provide material support to ISIS and for lying to U.S. immigration officials about their alleged ties to terrorist organizations. This is a serious failure of the government's most important responsibility -- keeping the American people safe. Under current law the American people have little say about the refugee program since their elected representatives have little authority over the number of refugees admitted into the country, or where they are resettled. When concerns about the lack of vetting for Syrian refugees erupted in 2015, over half of America's governors opposed letting them into their states. This opposition tracked with the American people, as poll after poll showed a majority had concerns about accepting Syrian refugees. Resettlement continues despite their concerns. Our Refugee Program Integrity Restoration Act fixes these problems. The bill enhances the integrity of the refugee program, curbs fraud and protects national security. Notably, it requires the implementation of a fraudulent document detection program and the creation of a searchable database of scanned documents. It also requires federal immigration officers to review publicly available internet postings, including social media, for each applicant. The bill creates a second line of defense once the refugee is admitted by allowing regular security vetting of each admitted refugee until they change their immigration status. It also requires the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office to report on the security of the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, the number of refugees convicted of terrorism-related offenses, and the use of federally funded benefit programs. Our bill empowers the American people by allowing their elected officials to decide whether to resettle refugees in their communities. The Refugee Program Integrity Restoration Act reduces the refugee ceiling to 50,000 annually -- the number proposed by President Trump -- and shifts to Congress authority to change the number. No longer will the president be able to decide unilaterally how many refugees come to the United States, as President Obama repeatedly did. This ensures uniformity, with Congress setting annual limits, as is the case for all other immigration programs with annual limits. The American people have been -- and will always be -- compassionate and generous, but we must not allow bad actors to take advantage of that. The Refugee Program Integrity Restoration Act makes meaningful reforms to our refugee program, enabling it to meet the security challenges of the 21st century.

By Rep. Bob Goodlatte, Rep Raul Labrador One of the most important aspects of immigration reform is bolstering enforcement of existing immigration law. While most unlawful immigrants come to the U.S. seeking a better life for themselves and their families, there are too many others who commit crimes against Americans, including murder. These crimes are especially devastating for the victims' loved ones because they could have been prevented if our laws were actually enforced. We have recently introduced legislation, the Davis-Oliver Act, to give law enforcement at all levels the tools and resources they need to keep America safe and secure. This is a vital first step -- but not the only step -- in modernizing our broken immigration system. Under President Obama, interior enforcement deteriorated dramatically as his administration refused to enforce immigration laws, rewrote the law through executive action, and implemented policies that enabled millions of unlawful and criminal aliens to remain in the United States free from any possibility of removal. These policies had--and continue to have--dramatic consequences. The rule of law was undermined as hundreds of thousands of Central American unaccompanied minors and families arrived at the Southwest border during the Obama years and were released into the U.S. And too many Americans were killed or seriously harmed at the hands of unlawful immigrants who joined gangs and/or committed crimes. The Trump administration has begun to reverse the Obama Administration's disastrous policies and is enforcing the law as written. President Trump has issued executive orders to strengthen the interior enforcement and implement strong border security measures. Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly and Attorney General Jeff Sessions are already implementing these executive orders and there have been quick results. Illegal border crossings at the Southwest border have dropped dramatically in 2017, due in large part to consistent enforcement of the law and the strong message that the U.S. no longer tolerates illegal immigration. Despite the progress made within the Executive Branch, our laws still need to be improved to provide the Trump administration with the additional tools it needs and to ensure that all future administrations continue to enforce the law. This week, the House Judiciary Committee will take up a bill to improve the interior enforcement of our immigration laws to prevent criminal aliens from roaming free in our communities. The Davis-Oliver Act is named after Placer County Detective Michael Davis, Jr., and Sacramento County Deputy Sheriff Danny Oliver, who were murdered by an unlawful immigrant in California in October 2014. The bill removes the ability of any president to unilaterally shut down immigration enforcement by granting states and localities the authority to enforce federal immigration laws consistent with federal practices. Local law enforcement officers are trusted to enforce many federal laws, including homicide, rape, and drug laws -- but not immigration laws. The Davis-Oliver Act would change that. The Davis-Oliver Act also ensures that unlawful immigrants convicted of drunk driving are deported. Drunk driving is currently not a deportable offense and many offenders have been released into communities, even when their recklessness results in the death of Americans. For example, in January 2016, 21-year-old Sarah Root was killed in Omaha, Neb., after an unlawful immigrant driving drunk struck her car. She had just graduated from college. To make matters worse, the person responsible was released from custody and is still on the loose. This common sense bill also protects public safety by enhancing penalties for deported felons who return to the United States. And it also strengthens current law to penalize sanctuary cities that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration authorities. These changes are desperately needed. In 2015, Kate Steinle was murdered in San Francisco, a known sanctuary city, by an unlawful immigrant, Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, who had previously been deported five times and was convicted of multiple felonies. Another criminal immigrant, also deported at least five times, Nicodemo Coria-Gonzales, is suspected of being responsible for nearly a dozen sexual assaults in Austin, Texas. He allegedly kidnapped a woman and attempted to light her on fire using gasoline, and kidnapped and raped a 68-year old woman. We cannot allow dangerous unlawful immigrants to repeatedly enter the U.S. without consequence. The Davis-Oliver Act is not the end of the House Judiciary Committee's efforts to improve our nation's immigration system, but it is a critical first step. The most important duty of the federal government is to keep Americans safe, and for far too long our immigration laws and lack of enforcement have been failing the American people and harming too many lives. The Republican Congress is working with the Trump administration hand in hand to ensure our laws are enforced and improved, and to enhance public safety. We have much work to do and are committed to ensuring our immigration system is enforced in order to better protect the American people. Republican Bob Goodlatte represents Virginia's 6th congressional district in the House of Representatives. He is chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. Representative Raul Labrador represents Idaho's 1st congressional district in the House of Representatives and is Vice Chairman of the Immigration and Border Security Subcommittee.

By Josh Siegel Resigned to the strong possibility that the House will need to fund the government through a continuing resolution after this fiscal year, conservatives are warning party leaders of what it would take for them to support such a stopgap measure. With the much-hyped regular order appropriations process looking stalled--if not finished--before it really started, conservatives say that a funding bill that extends current government spending, as a continuing resolution does, should stretch until next year. Government funding expires Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year. The length of the continuing resolution is important to conservatives because they don't want to have to revisit government funding during the lame duck session of Congress, which is the time after the next president is elected and before he or she takes office. "I will only vote for a continuing resolution that stretches into next year," said Rep. Raúl Labrador, R-Idaho, speaking Thursday before reporters on Capitol Hill. "Because everything bad happens during the lame duck session, and I just don't believe that the lame duck session should be where we're making big decisions about the future of the country," added Labrador, who is a leader of the conservative House Freedom Caucus. "If we can't do the appropriations as we should, if we can't get those done, then we need to wait until about March to then start the process again." A continuing resolution is a funding method widely loathed, but has proven to be a regular feature of an era of divided Congress. "Everything bad happens during the lame duck session," says @Raul_Labrador. This year appears to be following the same path, even after House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., had called for the process of funding the government to be different--or normal. Ryan, when he became speaker in October, said he wanted to open up the legislative process, returning to so-called regular order, where lawmakers could offer up policy riders to attach to spending bills that would be debated and voted on individually. But things haven't worked that way. Republicans first failed to vote on a budget resolution--an aspirational document that would have been a blueprint for the spending bills to follow--due to a disagreement over the spending levels it would have set. Then, Ryan was forced to go back on his open process promise when the House failed to advance the energy and water spending bill due to a controversial LGBT amendment offered by Democrats. Fearing that Democrats would continue to offer contentious amendments in an effort to defeat appropriations bills they don't like, Ryan, with the support of the Freedom Caucus, changed the House rules so that only GOP leaders choose the amendments that get votes. Yet this strategy hasn't helped the process go any smoother, and House conservatives are already accusing Republican leaders of blocking their amendments. "Everything we are doing now with closed rules, and all the disruption on the House floor and bills that come up that haven't been properly vetted out of committee, is the result of losing regular order," Rep. Dave Brat, R-Va., told reporters Thursday. "We bargained those away. We are no longer in regular order [and] that's hugely important." While the House and the Senate have each passed three bills, Congress has yet to send any of them to the president's desk for his signature. Lawmakers are also facing a short calendar, as the House and Senate are out of session after next week for more than seven weeks due to the national conventions and their normal summer recess. With that reality, House conservatives argue that the next best thing is to fund the government at current levels--all at once--until a new president assumes office. "I think we should avoid a lame duck session," said Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, in the briefing for reporters Thursday. "You've got Harry Reid leaving, you've got President Obama leaving, and this is a chance to just line up the Christmas tree for all the wants for the future. We need to really to avoid that happening. There's too many people that would love to make deals to just overwhelm the American public and we do not need that to happen if we are going to salvage this little experiment in democracy."