One of the lawmakers who helped to negotiate the bipartisan bill designed to overhaul the immigration system in the United States predicted yesterday that the legislation would have passed the Senate by July 4th, although Republicans in the House of Representatives are warning that they intend to write their own variation on the legislation one bit at a time.
Senator Charles Schumer says that he anticipates that around 70% of the Senate will vote to let the measure go to the full Senate by next Monday. However, even if it then passes, the bill will be in for tough opposition in the House of Representatives, which is dominated by the Republican Party and where lawmakers are coming up with their own piecemeal version that could well disrupt the hoped for path to US citizenship for the approximately 11 million undocumented immigrants who are living in the United States illegally.
“We are moving forward because we believe in a bipartisan way this is so vital for America and we’ll have a good bill,” Schumer says. Some House lawmakers are already putting the brakes on, however, with Republican Ileana Ros-Lehtinen declaring that the bill will not move in the House of Representatives.
Despite that, Schumer remains confident. “Congressman Boehner is in a box,” he notes. “There are about 60 or 70 of his people who are against any immigration reform. But at the same time he knows that the Republican Party will be consigned to a minority party for a generation if they’re anti-immigration.”