Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., checks his phone before a hearing on Capitol Hill in September.

RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

And I'm Steve Inskeep. Good morning.

Here's a small reminder when it comes to immigration law and the American system of checks and balances.

MONTAGNE: To change the law, it's not enough for President Obama to support it. It's also not enough that a bipartisan group of senators released a plan.

INSKEEP: The House of Representatives must approve a change, and that chamber is dominated by a Republican Party many of whose members have strongly opposed a path to citizenship for millions outside the law.

MONTAGNE: Many House Republicans now say it's time to act. But, as we've heard on this program, it's not clear that they all mean the same thing when they talk of reform.

INSKEEP: Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte is charged with drafting a House immigration bill. NPR's David Welna visited the Virginia Republican's home district.

(SOUNDBITE OF TRAINS)

DAVID WELNA, BYLINE: Freight trains screech and rumble through the heart of downtown Roanoke. It's a tidy city of nearly a hundred thousand between the Allegheny and Blue Ridge Mountains, in southwestern Virginia. And while trains roll right through Roanoke, in recent years, immigrants from more than 70 nations have stayed here and elsewhere in the Shenandoah Valley; some working in apple orchards, many others in poultry processing plants, still others in construction or the restaurant business.

(SOUNDBITE OF CONVERSATIONS)

WELNA: At a gathering of local businesspeople this week in downtown Roanoke, I posed the same question to several of them: What should happen with the millions of immigrants who are in the country unlawfully?

ED TOOMEY: We use Mexicans in our work and, you know, they're fine people but there has to be a law. They have to abide by the rules, like everybody else.

CINDY SANCHEZ: You know, it's not for me to judge them. I know they're here - the people that I come across, I know they're here because they want a better life for their family.

MIKE SUTTON: It's a tough issue, but I would like to see ways that we can figure out how to get them - go through some steps to make them legal.

WELNA: That last comment came from Mike Sutton, a realtor who favors some form of amnesty. Preceding him were building contractor Ed Toomey and another realtor, Cindy Sanchez. Then, another local makes an appearance.

REPRESENTATIVE BOB GOODLATTE: How're you doing?

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Hi. How are you?

GOODLATTE: Good, Bob Goodlatte. Good to see you.

WELNA: Congressman Bob Goodlatte is well known here, having represented this district for more than two decades. As we sit down to discuss the bill this Republican conservative and former immigration lawyer aims to produce, he makes one thing clear: He is against a path to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants.

GOODLATTE: This is a broken immigration system. It's had problems for a long time and work needs to be done, both in terms of reforming legal immigration programs, and in terms of enforcing our immigration laws, and addressing what happens to the 10 million or more people who are not lawfully in the United States.

WELNA: Do you favor an ultimate path to citizenship for these people?

GOODLATTE: I do not.

WELNA: Goodlatte says this is a nation of immigrants, but it is also a nation of laws.

GOODLATTE: People have a pathway to citizenship right now, it's to abide by the immigration laws. And if they have a family relationship, if they have a job skill that allows them to do that, they can obtain citizenship. But simply someone who broke the law, came here, say I'll give you citizenship now - that I don't think is going to happen.

WELNA: It annoys Goodlatte that President Obama's been weighing in on the immigration debate.

GOODLATTE: I think the president should calm down, back off, and let the Congress do its work.

WELNA: What's really required to get an immigration bill, he says, is bipartisan cooperation.

GOODLATTE: And if people start prescribing or pre-judging how we're going to find that common ground in the middle, he's going to simply not have a bill.

WELNA: A top objective for Goodlatte is to expand a guest worker program for immigrant-labor-dependent U.S. agriculture, should millions already here illegally be allowed to stay.

GOODLATTE: You're going to have to have a program that assures those farms and those processing plants that there will be workers. Because if you give them legal status, they can work anywhere in the United States, they're not going to necessarily work at the hardest, toughest, dirtiest jobs.

WELNA: Those who've watched Goodlatte over the years say he should have considerable political leeway at home for drafting an immigration bill. Harry Wilson is a political scientist at Roanoke College.

PROFESSOR HARRY WILSON: I don't think immigration is a real core issue in this district, so I don't think it's a do or die issue for him. Maybe one of some importance, but it's not one where he's likely to lose the next election based on what he does.

WELNA: Or what he does not do. But it would appear that even in Goodlatte's mostly rural, mountain-bound district, people do want him to do something about an immigration system all agree is broken.

David Welna, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.