Comprehensive immigration reform seems to top everyone's legislative wish list this year, and bills are already taking shape in the White House and the Democratic-led Senate.

A bipartisan group of senators recently laid out a path to citizenship for millions living in the country unlawfully. Less clear is where the Republican-led House is headed on immigration.

The man charged with drafting the House immigration bill is Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, a Republican from Virginia.

Goodlatte's district is home to Roanoke, Va., a tidy city of nearly 100,000 between the Allegheny and Blue Ridge mountains. In recent years, immigrants from more than 70 nations have settled there and elsewhere in the Shenandoah Valley — some working in apple orchards, many others in poultry-processing plants and still others in construction or the restaurant business.

 

READ MORE