Immigration Reform 2014: Rep. Paul Ryan Says House GOP To Stick To ‘Piecemeal’ Approach

The Associated Press reports that at a luncheon on Thursday hosted by the San Antonio Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) said Republican leaders in the House of Representatives were committed to handling immigration reform this year, through a series of small bills addressing the issue. "Let's just say it's eight bills -- I don't know. These will represent a smart approach," Ryan said. "We don't want to get into a situation where we end up with some big 1,000-page bill. But we do realize there are things that have to be sequenced."

The AP notes that Ryan emphasized that the GOP majority in the House would not compromise their own “piecemeal” legislation with the comprehensive immigration reform bill which passed the Senate last June. "We're not going to enter into a process that entertains the idea of taking the Senate bill,” he said. “So we won't what we call `conference' with the Senate bill. So we're going to do it our own way.” That unwillingness to conference, he indicated, is rooted in Republicans’ lack of trust in President Barack Obama’s commitment to enforcing immigration laws, especially in regard to monitoring and controlling traffic across the US-Mexico border -- an area which the House GOP’s list of principles on the issue, to be presented next week, will address.

Ryan, who several months ago emerged as one of the most prominent House Republicans to endorse a version of immigration reform which would include the extension of legal status -- but not a special path to citizenship -- to most of the nation’s undocumented immigrants, also said on Thursday that reform should allow those living in the US illegally to “come out of the shadows”, without granting amnesty. Ryan has in the past sought to counter immigrant advocates’ calls for a special path to citizenship for the undocumented, telling North Dakota radio this July that most of those without papers “just want to have a legal status so they can work to provide for their families.”