Immigration Reform News: How Are Opponents Of The 'Gang Of Eight' Immigration Bill Using The Boston Bombings To Slow Its Progress?

After it was revealed that the suspects for the Boston Marathon bombings were originally from Chechnya, the most senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, said on Friday during a Senate hearing that in the wake of the revelation, legislators in Washington should proceed slowly on immigration legislation.

"Given the events of this week," Grassley said. "It's important for us to understand the gaps and loopholes in our immigration system."

Another one of immigration reform's most outspoken critics, Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, had previously made a similar argument. A day after the attacks occurred, he told the National Review that speculation that the culprit was a foreign national on a student visa meant that Congress should be cautious about rushing legislation which would offer citizenship to undocumented immigrants.

The National Review wrote this week that Republican opponents to the legislation may be calling for the Senate to take their time with the bill in order to give the public time to sour on the bill's proposals.

Grassley was rebuked at the hearing by legislators who supported the bill, both Republican and Democrat. Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York, asked those present not to jump to conclusions or "conflate those events with this legislation." Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, part of the bipartisan "Gang of Eight" which authored the immigration reform bill, issued a joint statement regarding the tragedy's relationship to the immigration bill.

"Some have already suggested that the circumstances of this terrible tragedy are justification for delaying or stopping entirely the effort," the statement said. "In fact, the opposite is true: Immigration reform will strengthen our nation's security by helping us identify exactly who has entered our country and who has left."

The bill would spend about $6.5 billion more on US-Mexico border security over a 10-year period, with $3 billion going toward monitoring the border with technologies gleaned from the Department of Defense, including drones.

On Friday, the conservative political commentator Ann Coulter wrote in a Twitter post following the death of the first Boston bombing suspect: "It's too bad Suspect Number One won't be able to be legalized by Marco Rubio now." Rubio, a Republican Senator from Florida, was one of the "Gang of Eight", and has drawn fire from many of his former supporters from the Tea Party movement.

The two suspects came to the United States in 2002 from Chechnya, a predominantly Muslim republic in Russia with a long history of separatist struggle. They were in the United States legally, according to law enforcement officials.