Hours after House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said his party's majority in the House would not compromise their own legislation on immigration reform with the Senate's comprehensive bill to create a single bill overhauling the nation's immigration system, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) lashed out at Boehner and Republicans in the House of Representatives. "They're doing nothing over there," he said of House Republicans during an interview with Fusion TV at the Capitol. "Zero. And to do this intellectual yoga drill where nobody knows what he's talking about, is like some of the yoga moves I tried and I can't do."
"If they pass something we could at least go to conference, we could do something there. Because in a conference, the American people are watching what we do. The way it is now, he does nothing so there's nothing to watch," he continued. Reid said he was "stunned" and told the network, "How could anybody in good conscience tell one group he's trying to do immigration reform, and a few minutes later, say 'I'm not going to do anything about a conference?'"
Earlier in the day, Boehner told reporters that House Republicans had "no intention of ever going to conference on the Senate bill" even while insisting that he was committed to passing immigration reform legislation. "Let's understand something: I want us to deal with this issue. But I want to deal with it in a common-sense, step-by-step way." That morning, when two undocumented immigrant teenagers confronted the House Speaker at a Capitol Hill diner, Boehner told them, "I'm trying to find some way to get this thing done. But it's not easy -- not going to be an easy path forward. But I've made it clear since the day after the election that it's time to get this done."
House Republicans have said they do not trust the Department of Homeland Security and the Obama administration to enforce parts of the Senate's bill designed to lock down unauthorized traffic across the US-Mexico border and put the whole of it under constant surveillance. Many of them have said legalization measures extended to now-undocumented immigrants should be dependent on the fulfillment of border-enforcement metrics, with immigrants' progress on a path to a green card or citizenship stalled or rolled back if the metrics aren't reached. House Republican leaders say a bill giving legal status of some sort to many undocumented immigrants is in the works, but support for one which would give a path to citizenship - a key tenet for Democrats - is questionable among the GOP.
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