Immigration Reform 2013: Raul Labrador Quits House 'Gang Of Eight' Over Healthcare Differences

An impasse over the issue of providing health care for currently undocumented immigrants has threatened to derail the efforts of the House "gang of eight" representatives who have banded together to craft their own version of an immigration reform bill. Now, an Idaho Republican and key conservative member of the group, Raul Labrador, has said that he will resign from the group.

A statement on Labrador's website read that "up until recently, the 'Gang of Eight' had an agreement in principle that illegal immigrants would be responsible for their own health care costs, principally through requiring them to purchase health insurance." He added that after the group's meeting on Wednesday, the framework had changed in a way which he could no longer support. "Like most Americans, I believe that health care is first and foremost a personal responsibility. While I will no longer be part of the bipartisan 'Group of Eight' House negotiators, I will not abandon my efforts to modernize our broken immigration system by securing our borders and creating a workable guest worker program."

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Labrador, who is Puerto Rican, is an immigration attorney and one of the most active members of the 2010 wave of conservative representatives swept into office by Tea Party voters. According to his website, the sort of reform which Labrador envisions would be one in which the nation's 11 million undocumented immigrants are deported and a guest worker program is implemented which offers no pathway to citizenship for those who come to work in the United States.

"We just couldn't agree on the health-care language and I think we've been going around in circles on the health-care language for a long time," he told reporters on Wednesday night.

Reports of the group's dissolution have dogged it for weeks. Earlier on Wednesday, ABC News wrote that the eight legislators were going to meet that day for the last time without having produced a comprehensive reform bill.

Other members of the House "Gang of Eight" expressed optimism over the fate of the group's legislation. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) said he was "very optimistic as to where we're headed," while Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) said he hoped an announcement on a completed bill would come soon, adding that about 80 percent of the bill had already been drafted. Rep. John Carter (R-Texas) said the group has "found a way to go forward."