Immigration Bill 2013: Obama Says He Will Accept ‘Piecemeal’ Approach, Still ‘Optimistic’ On Reform Before End Of Year

President Barack Obama continued his push for immigration reform on Tuesday, telling business executives at the Wall Street Journal CEO Council that he was "optimistic" that Congress would pass legislation on the issue before the end of 2013. Obama also reiterated his openness to House Republicans' insistence that reform be dealt with in a "piecemeal" way instead of the comprehensive overhaul bill passed by the Senate in June. "If they want to chop that thing up into five pieces, as long as all five pieces get done, I don't care what it looks like," Obama said. "What we don't want to do is simply carve out one piece of it...but leave behind some of the tougher stuff that still needs to get done."

His statements come a week after House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), who has refused to introduce the Senate overhaul to the House floor for consideration and a vote, said he had "no intention" of conferencing the small, single-issue immigration bills authored by the House GOP with the Senate's bipartisan bill. Many supporters of the Senate bill fear that the House could pass a series of immigration bills on US-Mexico border enforcement and guest-worker programs, among other things, but without extending a path to citizenship for many of the nation's 11.7 million undocumented immigrants, as support for the idea is questionable among House GOP rank-and-file.

Many GOP members have said they oppose the Senate bill because they believe the path to a green card and citizenship it extends should hinge directly upon the Department of Homeland Security's fulfillment of surveillance and apprehension metrics along the US-Mexico border - including establishing total surveillance of traffic across it and 90 percent apprehension rates of would-be unauthorized crossers. If the DHS fails to meet the goals, they say, newly legalized immigrants should see their progress toward a green card affected.

The Wall Street Journal reports that just after Obama appeared before the CEO Council, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), chairman of the House Budget Committee, came before the Council and told it that there wasn't enough time left on the Congressional calendar to tackle the issue in 2013. In doing so, Ryan joins the third-ranking Republican in the House, Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who told immigration reform advocates in a private meeting last week that the House wouldn't take up the issue in 2013 for lack of time.

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