Hours after President Barack Obama delivered a speech during which he told House Republicans who have rejected a comprehensive immigration reform bill which the Senate passed in June that if they had "new and different additional ideas for how we should move forward, then we want to hear them", House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) issued a statement in response. "I hope President Obama meant what he said today," Goodlatte wrote, because "House Republicans and the American public have rejected the Senate approach" to improving the nation's immigration system, pointing to a July 2013 Washington Post-ABC News poll which found that 53 percent of Americans said they would rather the House "break the Senate plan into pieces to be considered separately" rather than carry out an up-or-down vote.
"Our immigration system is in desperate need of reform and I remain committed to working on this critical issue," the Virginia Republican said. "But we don't need another massive, Obamacare-like bill that is full of surprises and dysfunction after it becomes law. The President's unworkable health care system highlights the need for a more thoughtful approach to immigration reform so that the end product is actually workable and enforceable." He went on to repeat his calls for the House's GOP majority would pursue a "step-by-step approach to immigration reform". So far that approach has yielded no bill which would extend a path to citizenship for the estimated 11.7 million undocumented immigrants in the United States - perhaps the central pillar of immigration reform for the president and his Democratic party, but an idea for which support is questionable among Republicans in the House. GOP members in that chamber are said to be crafting one bill which would extend citizenship to young undocumented immigrants and another which would give many undocumented immigrants a provisional legal status.
Goodlatte did not mention citizenship in his response to the president's speech. "We must first address immigration enforcement and border security and make sure they are up and operating effectively," he wrote about the priorities of immigration reform. "We also need to improve our legal immigration system and find the appropriate legal status for unlawful immigrants. It's imperative that we avoid the same type of disasters that we are currently witnessing in the botched Obamacare rollout. The President should work with Congress, including House Republicans, to achieve immigration reform and not against us."
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