Newly elected House Speaker Paul Ryan ruled out working with President Obama on comprehensive immigration reform, saying Obama cannot be trusted on the issue, said Reuters. During interviews on television, Ryan “acknowledged that he promised the House Freedom Caucus, which includes the most conservative members of the House, not to bring up immigration reform legislation, and blamed Obama.” The Senate passed bipartisan immigration legislation in July 2013 but House Republican leaders refused to call a vote on the bill. The issue has been moribund in Congress since then.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said last summer that Obama’s executive orders, intended to shield up to 4.7 million undocumented immigrants from deportation, made it impossible for Congress to consider immigration reform. Reuters quoted Ryan as saying on CBS’s “Face the Nation” program, “He [Obama] tried to go it alone, circumventing the legislative process with his executive orders, so that is not in the cards.”
Agricultural groups backed immigration reform as a way to assure a legal and reliable work force. By some estimates, more than half of agricultural workers are undocumented. Farm groups say the current guest-worker program is unwieldy.