In the State of the Union Address the president was committed to passing comprehensive immigration reform measure. “It is time to heed the call of business leaders, labor leaders, faith leaders, and law enforcement – and fix our broken immigration system.”
Immigration reform passed the Senate last year, but has stalled in the House and Speaker Boehner today has cast strong doubt that it could pass this year. The greatest impediment to passing Immigration reform this year is the president himself as stated by the speaker in his weekly news conference.
“The American people, including many of my members, don’t trust that the reform that we’re talking about will be implemented as it was intended to be,” he said, citing executive actions by the Obama administration that have changed or delayed implementation of the president’s health care law. “There’s widespread doubt about whether this administration can be trusted to enforce our laws, and it’s going to be difficult to move any immigration legislation until that changes.”
Immigration reform has been a continuous issue in Washington with both Republican and Democrats wanting to pass comprehensive Immigration Reform. Two remaining sticking point always emerge, a pathway to citizenship for the approximately 11 million illegal immigrants and border security.
The last time comprehensive immigration reform passed was in 1986, the issues where the same pathway to citizenship and border security.
The reform measure passed with over three million undocumented immigrants granted legal status, but unfortunately border security never materialized.
The issue has resurfaced again. This time instead of 3 million undocumented immigrants we are speaking of 11 million. Again, border security is the stumbling block for Republicans in passing immigration reform.
Democrats want a path way to citizenship first and will discuss border security later. In the last immigration reform measure, border security never was dealt with and Republicans insist that it be included in any reform deal.
The toughest obstacles in passing comprehensive reform message, is that Republicans do not trust the president in enforcing the laws as passed by Congress.
Republicans site the Affordable Care Act as prime example of where the president changes the law on a routine basis.
In the midst of an election year and lack of trust the Republicans have for the president in enforcing existing laws it seems unlikely immigration reform will pass this year.
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