Washington Post (Editorial)
July 10, 2015
THE
OTHER day, House Speaker John A. Boehner found himself in Ireland,
where somehow he left the mistaken impression that he intends to
legislate a solution to the United
States’ broken-down immigration system. Pressed by Irish Prime Minister
Enda Kenny, who complained that some 50,000 Irish citizens in the
United States live in a state of limbo owing to their expired visas, Mr.
Boehner (R-Ohio) mentioned for the umpteenth
time the importance he attaches to immigration reform. If only.
Within
days, the speaker’s office was forced to walk back his comments, lest
Mr. Boehner raise expectations that the Republican-controlled House has
the slightest intention
of taking up a comprehensive immigration bill, or even writing one. The
GOP’s inertia, said a spokesman for Mr. Boehner, is all the fault of
President Obama, who simply can’t be trusted to enforce any law Congress
might pass.
That
would be a more convincing excuse if Mr. Boehner himself believed it,
which he clearly doesn’t. Just 15 months ago — before Mr. Obama muddied
the water by trying
to change immigration law by executive action — the speaker
forthrightly blamed his fellow GOP lawmakers for quailing at his
entreaties that they take up an immigration bill.
“Here’s
the attitude,” he said, scrunching his face like a squalling toddler to
make plain his contempt for the Republican excuses. “ ‘Ohhhh, don’t
make me do this. Ohhhh,
this is too hard.’ ”
No
doubt, Mr. Boehner’s caucus didn’t much appreciate being blamed by the
speaker for its inaction. So before long, he duly reverted to the
pretext favored by Republicans
— that they cannot pass laws because the president can’t be trusted to
enforce them.
In
fact, for a year Mr. Boehner sat on an immigration bill that Mr. Obama
would have been pleased to enforce — the one passed by the Senate, with
bipartisan support, in
2013.
That
bill, or one like it, could have passed the House and been enacted had
the speaker allowed it to reach the lower chamber’s floor for a vote. It
included tougher enforcement
and a path to citizenship for the nation’s 11 million undocumented
immigrants. Mr. Boehner coaxed and cajoled and worked his wiles, but in
the face of opposition from conservative Republicans, he never permitted
a vote.
It
was the GOP’s recalcitrance that finally prompted Mr. Obama to issue
his executive order in November, shielding several million illegal
immigrants from deportation.
Although that order has been blocked in the courts, where it is all but
certain to be tied up for many more months, Republicans seized on it as
an excuse for continued paralysis — the very same paralysis that has
beset them for almost a decade on the immigration
issue.
The
truth is, it is political demographics, not the president’s
trustworthiness that has frozen the Republicans. In thrall to part of
their base, GOP lawmakers have thrown
in their lot with an overwhelmingly white, aging constituency, beyond
which they see no future. The United States, ever more diverse, is
changing fast; House Republicans, fearful of that change, prefer
scapegoats to solutions.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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