New York Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer had a rather novel :compromise” for Republicans claiming they won’t vote for immigration reform because they don’t trust President Obama to enforce it: “Enact the law this year, but simply not let it actually start until 2017 — AFTER President Obama’s term is over.”
After a heady January on Capitol Hill, when Speaker of the House John Boehner all-but-guaranteed Republican support for some type of comprehensive immigration reform, prospects for an immigration bill dimmed substantially. Many congressional Republicans in the House and Senate, while expressing a desire to change the status quo, are loathe to trust Obama to enforce the security measures placed in any law they pass.
So Schumer floated a new plan.
“There’s a simple solution,” he said. “Let’s enact the law this year, but simply not let it actually start until 2017 — AFTER President Obama’s term is over.
“Now I think the rap against him, that he won’t enforce the law, is false,” Schumer continued. “He’s deported more people than any other president. But you can actually have the law start in 2017 without doing much violence to it. You’d simply move the date back from December 31, 2011 to December 31, 2013 as to the deadline for people who can get either legalization or citizenships, so we can go after the new people who come in later. And it would solve the problem.”
The New York senator stressed that this is the last year an immigration reform bill would be politically possible. “Make no mistake about it, David,” he declared. “This view that we can get this done in 2015, 2016 is false. You’ll have the Republican presidential primaries that will pull people over to the right, Tea Party maximizes — so simple! Let’s say to our Republican colleagues, ‘You don’t trust Obama? Enact a law now, but put it into effect in 2017 [and] we can get something real done for America.’”
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