Wall Street Journal (Article by Michael Crittenden): Senate Republican leaders said Tuesday to stay tuned regarding their reaction to President Barack Obama's Friday announcement on immigration, underscoring the political conundrum Republicans are faced with on the sensitive issue.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) told reporters he would wait until presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney weighs in on the issue in a speech to Latino leaders on Thursday.
"I think were going to wait and see what Gov. Romney has to say and then our members are going to be discussing his views on this, and I think many of them will have similar views," Mr. McConnell said following weekly caucus lunches.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.), speaking a few minutes after McConnell, said it was surprising Republicans were taking so long to respond to Mr. Obama's Friday move to stop the deportation of some young illegal immigrants.
"It's too bad [Mr. Romney's] campaign had a year and a half and they should have some semblance of an idea of how he feels about that," Mr. Reid told reporters.
Both Mr. Romney and Mr. Obama later this week are scheduled to address the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials at the groups annual conference in Florida. Politicians from both parties have spent the last few days jockeying to position themselves on Mr. Obama's announcement last week, mindful of the increasing strength and influenceof the Latino electorate.
Earlier Tuesday, House Majority Leader John Boehner (R., Ohio) said the move by the White House to act without Congress on immigration issues could hurt efforts to reach a broader agreement on immigration policy.
"The president's actions are going to make it much more difficult for us to work in a bipartisan way to get to a permanent solution," he said from the lobby of the Republican National Committee building in Washington.
Mr. Reid, speaking Tuesday morning on the floor of the Senate, said it was Republicans, not the White House, who have scuttled efforts to overhaul the nation's immigration system.
"We've tried, they are totally opposed to our doing anything," Mr. Reid said. "We've tried, but we just get a handful of Republican votes."
The White House plan would allow an estimated 800,000 young people brought to the U.S. as children to work legally within the country without the fear of deportation. Only immigrants who are under the age of 30 and who came to the country before they were 16 and haven't committed a major crime would be eligible for the new program.
Mr. Romney, in a televised interview on CBS over the weekend, declined to say whether he would repeal Mr. Obama's plan if elected. He did criticize the move as politically motiviated, coming less than five months before the general election.
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