President Obama yesterday said that there is just a small window of opportunity remaining for immigration reform to be passed this year in the House of Representatives before the attention of Washington turns to the midterm congressional elections in November.
The comments indicate that the White House is still hopeful that progress can be made on the issue of immigration reform during 2014. Obama has been pushing for a revision of immigration laws in the United States, including offering a path to US citizenship for the 11 million undocumented immigrants already living and working in the country; however, the bill that was passed last year by the Senate, which is controlled by the Democrats, has stalled in the Republican party-dominated House of Representatives.
“We’ve got this narrow window,” Obama informed a meeting of leaders of the law enforcement community. “The closer we get to the midterm elections, the harder it is to get things done around here. We’ve got maybe a window of two, three months to get the ball rolling in the House of Representatives.”
Obama again noted that he was willing to compromise on some aspects of the immigration reform bill, but not the issue of creating a path to citizenship. He added that he feels that house speaker John Boehner and others are in favor of immigration reform but that “they’ve got to have a political space that allows them to get ahead and get it through their caucus and get it done.”