Immigration Reform 2013: Boehner Says House Will Not Take Up Senate Bill

Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio) reiterated on Wednesday his earlier promise that he will not bring the Senate's comprehensive immigration reform bill to a vote on the Republican-majority House floor, even after an amendment passed which would swell border-security expenditures to some $38 billion. "We'll do our own bill," Boehner told colleagues at their weekly closed-door meeting, adding, "it'll be a bill that reflects the will of our majority and the people we represent." Many House members have shown themselves unwilling to compromise on perhaps the central tenet of the Senate bill: the possibility of legal status and a path to citizenship for many of the nation's 11 million undocumented.

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The Washington Post cited GOP aides who said that Boehner reminded his fellow GOP members that he, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) had resolved back in May in a joint statement not to "just take up and vote on whatever the Senate passes." Instead, the House will continue to develop its own immigration legislation in a piecemeal series of smaller, much more conservative reforms. On Wednesday, it was expected to vote on legislation requiring employers to verify their workers' legal status.

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On Tuesday, Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.), one of the senators in the bipartisan team which helped draft the Senate legislation, told CNN that the worries of some fellow conservatives about border security provisions in the bill were unjustified, and compared them to the Berlin Wall.

"This is not only sufficient, it is well over sufficient," he said. "We'll be the most militarized border since the fall of the Berlin Wall. That's why I think this amendment was very important."

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On Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) expressed frustration over Boehner's proclamation that the House would not consider the bill, dismissing conservative opponents of legalization as "crazies". Reid and other supporters of it had hoped that the bill's apparent bipartisan appeal in the Senate would force Boehner to introduce it in the House for consideration.

"The speaker has said within a period of a little over 24 hours, we're going to pass immigration but we're going to have Democratic votes to do it. As soon as his crazies heard that, I guess they talked to him and next day he comes back and said: 'I will only pass it if I have the majority of the majority," Reid said, adding "The point is: I'm not sure he or anyone else in the Republican leadership in the House really know what they're doing."