Immigration Reform 2014: Biden Predicts ‘We’re Going To Pass This Senate Bill’

During a live Internet discussion about immigration hosted by Bing and Skype on Wednesday afternoon, Vice President Joe Biden predicted that Republican leadership in the House would reverse their position on a bipartisan Senate bill in 2014 and introduce it for a vote in the lower chamber. "We're going to pass this bill, this Senate bill that we're talking about here," Biden told a young undocumented immigrant who had asked whether she and her parents might be able to obtain a permanent reprieve from deportation one day. "It's going to happen."

The prospect seems an unlikely one in light of continuing resistance to the Senate's overhaul on the part of House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), who has dismissed the plan as a "1,300-page bill that no one had ever read" and repeatedly said GOP members in the House would pursue a "piecemeal" approach to immigration reform instead. President Barack Obama, who had been pressuring Boehner to introduce the Senate bill, saying it would pass despite the objection of many rank-and-file Republican representatives, has more recently indicated that he is willing to accept a series of small bills as long as they would provide a path to citizenship for many of the nation's undocumented immigrants.

That last bit - the path to citizenship - has been a sticking point for many House Republicans, and support for it is questionable among them. But the vice president assured the DREAMer who had left a query about deportations, saying, "You're not going to have to worry about anything. And your parents are not going to have to worry about getting deported." Biden made it clear that despite Obama's willingness to accommodate Boehner's preference, the White House would rather the House Speaker introduce the bill. "It's really pretty basic - pass the bill, John Boehner," Biden said. "Bring the bill up and let us pass it."

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