At a panel on immigration at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) just outside Washington, DC, two prominent Latino conservatives pleaded with the new Republican majority in Congress to introduce and pass an immigration reform bill.
“If we don’t do anything these next two years, we will fail as a party,” said Alfonso Aguilar with the American Principals Project. “There are some on the conservative side who would rather maintain the status quo, and the status quo is not acceptable.”
Mario Lopez, a self-described “proud conservative” with the Hispanic Leadership Fund added that if Republicans want curb unauthorized immigration, they need to quickly pass some sort of reform. “It’s almost impossible to immigrate legally to the United States right now,” he said. He added that Republicans have an opening right now to win Latino votes, due to widespread frustration with President Obama for “playing politics with the Hispanic community.”
But the one lawmaker present, Rep. Jeff Duncan (R) from South Carolina, assured the audience that he and his colleagues have no intention of passing an immigration reform bill. The reason? President Obama.
“Why should we pass something else out of Congress without any understanding that the President is going to enforce it?” he asked. “Or he may pick parts of it that he does or does not like. No one trusts the Administration to actually do what he’s sworn to do.”
Duncan suggested that Congress had been ready and willing to fix the broken immigration system, but President Obama’s executive action to temporarily protect some young immigrants from deportation, derailed that effort.
“When our laws aren’t respected and enforced, it poisons the well for the Congress to talk about what we do with the illegals that are here in this country,” he said.
But over the past few years, Republican lawmakers have indicated otherwise. Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK) told reporters in 2013 that his party had so much trouble merely keeping the government open, funded and running that it wouldn’t be smart to tackle the “divisive” issue of immigration. Other lawmakers openly encouraged holding immigration reform hostage to win deeper budget cuts. Republicans in Congress have also cited excuses ranging from the war in Syria to issues with the website Healthcare.gov.