Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) believes House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) will “cave in” on comprehensive immigration reform and a pathway to citizenship.
“I feel positive we will get an immigration bill passed,” Reid told the Las Vegas Sun on Sunday, two days before Boehner hired an adviser who has helped Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) push amnesty.
Reid, specifically speaking about a “pathway to citizenship” provision that the Congressional Budget Office determined would lower the wages of American workers, said he believed Boehner is going to “cave in” to the pressure. Big-business interests and the high-tech lobby, such as Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg’s FWD.us political group, have put pressure on House Republicans to pass immigration reform.
Though Boehner and other House Republicans have said they would not conference with the existing Senate bill, they have not ruled out going to conference on different piecemeal reform bills. Democrats and President Barack Obama have said that they would be okay with immigration reform being broken up into pieces so long as all the pieces passed. And Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) has said his “Republican friends” have told him they want a comprehensive immigration reform bill in everything but name only.