President Obama said Sunday the immigration reform bill that passed in the Senate would get through the Republican-controlled House if leadership put it up for a vote.
“It would pass, it would pass,” Mr. Obama told ABC’s “This Week With George Stephanopoulos.”
House Republicans are walking a fine line in discussing immigration reform, a debate that’s stalled as the party tries to reconcile its concerns about a path to residency status or citizenship for people who came to the United States illegally with its lagging support at the polls among Hispanics — a key and increasing voting bloc.
Mr. Obama said the legislation that passed the Democrat-controlled Senate — providing a path to citizenship for millions of undocumented residents while tightening up border security — “wasn’t perfect, wasn’t my bill, but got the job done.”
The problem, he argued, is there is a conservative faction of the GOP that thinks “compromise is a dirty word” and “anything that is even remotely associated with me, they feel obliged to oppose.”
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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