Advertisement

House GOP wants to take immigration reform one step at a time

WASHINGTON, Feb. 9 (UPI) -- A Republican lawmaker said the House would prefer to tackle immigration reform in piecemeal fashion rather than through a sweeping bill.

Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., said on "Fox News Sunday" that the Democratic-controlled Senate was too adamant about pushing a comprehensive reform bill for an issue that the House would prefer to handle in a more-cautious manner.

Advertisement

"I've always thought that you get a better solution to the three components of this problem if you let one of them be, let's secure the border at the workplace and border, let's determine the real workforce needs of the country and let's decide what to do with people who came here or stayed with that state illegally," said Blunt.

Blunt predicted that a comprehensive bill would provide President Obama an opening to change the legislation through executive order once it passed. "The Senate says, no one big bill or no bill at all," Blunt said. "That is a pretty hard thing to resolve, particularly when the president is saying if I don't like something ... I'm going to take care of it by signing an executive order."

Advertisement

Rep. Benjamin Cardin, D-Md., told Fox it appeared the House was actually more interested in bogging immigration reform down as long as possible to avoid an embarrassing argument within the GOP ranks.

"I think that there is so much infighting within the Republican Party in the House that they're just concerned that they'll show that fracturing," Cardin said. "Therefore, the immigration bill is one of the casualties."

Latest Headlines