Immigration Reform 2014: When Will Boehner Start Introducing Bills?

The New York Times reported on Thursday that aides to House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) reaffirmed Boehner’s commitment to a “step by step” approach to reforming the nation’s immigration laws, while other House Republicans offered explicit support for bills which would legalize agricultural workers and young undocumented immigrants brought to the country by their parents, and boost the number of visas for high-tech workers. White House officials told the Times that they will likely push the House to start passing legislation by May or June, when Republican primaries for the November midterm elections are over.

As House GOP leaders have rejected the Senate’s comprehensive bill – and with it, a bipartisan compromise on a single large bill – White House officials and activists say if the passage of a step-by-step overhaul hasn’t come by summer, they would make another push during the post-election lame-duck session at the end of 2014. In 2015, a new congress begins sessions, meaning lawmakers only have this year to pass current legislation before it expires. “We are organizing, mobilizing, getting ready here. I do really think that we have a real chance at this in the first half of the year,” Jim Wallis, president of Sojourners, a Christian social justice group in favor of immigration reform, told the Times.

It looks increasingly likely that Republican legislation on immigration reform will exclude a feature of the Senate’s bill which Democrats, including the president, see as crucial to an overhaul: a path to citizenship for many of the 11.7 million undocumented immigrants currently living in the United States. House GOP leaders have shown support for the idea of extending a legal status which would allow immigrants to live and work in the US, but withhold other privileges granted to citizens. Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin representative and former vice presidential candidate with Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign, is reportedly co-authoring one such legalization bill.