Several groups in the United States are against immigration reform and the Grassroots conservative groups helped to kill immigration reform in 2007. Few such anti-amnesty groups held press conferences, in reference to the immigration reform legislation of 1986 that legalized and issued Green Cards to more than 2.7 million undocumented immigrants. The founder of Remember 1986, Rusty Childress, stated that the Republicans have now started to support immigration reform because of the Latino vote.
The Federal Immigration Enforcement officers are against immigration reform, though AFL-CIO that represents 12 million workers, is supporting immigration reform. Initially, only a union representing federal immigration officers was against immigration reform but now the union has joined another immigration agency, the National Citizenship and Immigration Services Council (USCIS Council) that deals with the paperwork. The union now represents 20,000 members. USCIS council says that the immigration reform bill does not address the concerns about the current immigration system. The council says that the USCIS officers are currently required to approve visa applications without reviewing and that they are prevented from coordinating with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. According to this union, border security goals in the Senate immigration reform bill are not strict.
FAIR and the Center for Immigration Studies are the anti-amnesty groups that are against unauthorized immigration. These groups were earlier supported by the Republicans but now some from the Republican Party are trying to discredit these groups. There are few members in the House and the Senate who are against immigration reform. 8 conservatives in the House, headed by Rep. Steve King (Iowa), an opponent of immigration reform, jointly banded against immigration reform, in the Senate. However, this group did not represent all the Republicans in the House. Rep. Paul Ryan and Raul Labrador want the US Congress to pass the House immigration reform bill that would soon be unveiled and are against the Gang of Eight’s immigration reform bill. Likewise, Republicans in the Senate, Jeff Sessions and Charles Grassley, are against immigration reform. They are not only against unauthorized immigration but also against legal immigration.