Paul Ryan, the former Republican candidate for Vice President, says that legislation for comprehensive immigration reform can be passed that could incorporate new legal routes for Irish immigrants to be able to work in the United States. Ryan told an Irish immigration event for Republican Party members of the House of Representatives that they intended to tackle the issue in the autumn.
The Senate has already passed a bipartisan bill that would overhaul immigration laws in the United States for the first time in a quarter of a century but this bill has stalled in the House of Representatives, which is controlled by the Republicans who are worried about the plan to provide a pathway to citizenship for the nation’s 11 million undocumented immigrants.
Ryan, who was the running mate of Mitt Romney for the position of Vice President in the 2012 elections, says that immigration reform is definitely on House Republicans “to do” list for this autumn once the row over the country’s debt list has been dealt with.
“It’s going to be one of those legislative processes that is going to take some work,” Ryan admits. “There are those of us who are very much dedicated to doing this. This issue is not the hard issue – there are many other issues that are much harder but we have to get through it and we simply have to get to the floor and make the case and get the legislative process moving.”