WASHINGTON — Congressional Republicans are pronouncing President Barack Obama’s proposal that the next Congress overhaul the country’s immigration laws as dead before arrival.
In his year-end news conference Wednesday, Obama said his biggest regret about the recent lame-duck session of Congress was the defeat of the DREAM Act, a measure that offered a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children.
“It is heartbreaking,” Obama said as he explained how such immigrants often realized that they were without legal status only when they tried to go to college or join the military. “That can’t be who we are. To have our kids, classmates of our children, who are suddenly under this shadow of fear through no fault of their own. They didn’t break the law — they were kids.”
Congressional Republicans said in interviews Thursday that their concerns about the measure remained strong, and both House and Senate GOP leaders said they would fight any attempt to legalize any of the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. before the administration secured the nation’s border with Mexico.
“It is pointless to talk about any new immigration bills that grant amnesty until we secure the border, since such bills will only encourage more illegal immigration,” said incoming House Judiciary Committee chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas.
In an interview, Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, ranking Republican on the House immigration subcommittee, accused Obama of playing politics with immigration and toying with Latino voters.
“It is extraordinarily unlikely that any version of comprehensive immigration reform that includes amnesty will go through the House of Representatives,” he said.
Obama’s call on Congress to pass the DREAM Act “polarizes Americans along the lines of race and ethnicity,” King added. “He implies there is a realistic chance — he knows better, and therefore it makes it a political statement designed to gin up his base and pit Americans against Americans.”
During the recent contentious congressional debate over the act, Republicans said the measure was lax in allowing some lawbreakers to gain citizenship and said that the requirement that DREAM Act beneficiaries obtain two years of college education or military service set the bar too low.
Obama said he was open to new measures to improve border security but also wanted the incoming Congress to pass measures that legalized some undocumented immigrants.
“I think it is absolutely appropriate for the American people to expect that we do not have porous borders and anyone can come in here any time,” Obama said. “But I also think about those kids and I want to do right by them.”
