Immigration Reform For 2014 ‘In Doubt’, Says Paul Ryan

Reuters reports that Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) appeared on ABC News’s “This Week” on Sunday, where the former vice-presidential candidate and House Budget Committee Chairman said the future of a comprehensive immigration reform in 2014 was “clearly in doubt”. Despite recent gestures on the part of House GOP leadership and President Barack Obama which seem to indicate a compromise might be reached between them, Ryan described Republican distrust of the president as being of the sort that might down it. “Here’s the issue all Republicans agree on: we don’t trust the president to enforce the law,” he said. Scroll down to the end of the page to watch the whole interview.

"We have an increasingly lawless presidency where he is actually doing the job of Congress, writing new policies and new laws without going through Congress. Presidents don't write laws, Congress does," Ryan told host George Stephanopoulos. “When he does things like he did in healthcare, delaying mandates that the law said was supposed to occur when they were supposed to occur, that’s not his job. Executive orders are one thing. Executive orders that actually change the statute, that’s different.” He indicated that GOP members were largely motivated to move on immigration reform out of a desire to boost immigration enforcement internally and on the border – the number one order of business on the recently released House GOP “statement of principles”.

Ryan referenced Boston Marathon bombers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who were granted asylum from Russia as children, as proof of the system’s lack of security. “We don’t know who’s coming and going in this country,” he said. “We don’t have control of our border… doing nothing on the security side of this is not the responsible thing to do.” The Wisconsin representative has been an advocate of legalizing the status of the undocumented without offering them a special path to citizenship. But he echoed House GOP leaders’ refusal to conference their own “piecemeal” bills with the comprehensive Senate bill passed this summer. And when asked if a bill or bills overhauling the immigration system would come to Obama’s desk before the end of this year, he said, "I really don't know the answer to that question. That's clearly in doubt."