INDIANAPOLIS -- Republicans on Thursday evening walked off the floor of the Indiana House in protest of a move by majority Democrats to prevent any GOP amendments to legislation aimed at penalizing companies that hire illegal immigrants.

Republicans left the floor around 6:30 p.m., and Democratic House Speaker Patrick Bauer declared around 8 p.m. that the chamber was in recess until Monday.

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Forum: Discuss Proposal

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Bauer said the House would start Monday where it left off -- debating the immigration legislation with no further amendments.

However, House Minority Leader Brian Bosma, R-Indianapolis, said he considered Monday to be a new legislative day and that meant his caucus could file amendments seeking changes to the House version of the immigration legislation.

Bauer said if Republicans continued to boycott the floor, the impasse would threaten passage of other legislation, including proposed constitutional caps on property tax bills. Next week is the deadline for House bills to clear the Senate and vice versa.

House Republicans said the House version of the bill was too weak and they wanted to make changes to it, including a change that would take away medical and school benefits for illegal immigrants and their children.

But to prevent votes on any changes, Democrats took language in the bill and filed it as an amendment to another bill.

They did that four minutes before a deadline to file amendments on bills up for consideration Thursday. Republicans said the bill Democrats were trying to use as a new home for the immigration language had nothing to do with immigration.

The illegal-immigration bill had cleared the GOP-controlled Senate but it was changed by a Democrat-controlled House committee on Monday. The House version says a company could lose its business license if it was found to have hired illegal immigrants three times in five years; the Senate version had the time frame at 10 years.

The House version also removed a provision that would have punished people who transport or conceal illegal aliens.

House Democrats said they didn't want to vote on the changes that House Republicans wanted to introduce, including the one dealing with medical and school benefits.

"The federal government presribes what type of medical, educational, social service benefits that you have to provide to illegal aliens, and the state of Indiana doesn't have control over that," said state Rep. Vern Tincher, D-Terre Haute.

House Republicans said Democrats were blocking a vote on issues that are important to Indiana residents.

"I think it's obvious they don't want a serious illegal immigration bill to come out of this session," said state Rep. Eric Turner, R-Marion. "If they would, they would take our minority committee report, which I think the public would overwhelmingly support, that limits benefits to illegal immigrants in this state."