House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) reportedly promised a prominent Latino group last summer that Republicans would try to pass an amnesty bill last fall, just months after the Senate passed its comprehensive immigration bill that would give a pathway to citizenship to all of the country’s illegal immigrants.
According to a report in Politico, Boehner last summer “privately told the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference that if” pro-amnesty advocates “won the August recess, then Republicans would move a bill in the fall.”
“He promised us in that meeting that if we can just make the August recess of 2013 go smoothly and not be a riot around the country, that we would be able to get back after the August recess,” Robert Gittelson, vice president of governmental affairs for the NHCLC, told Politico.
Boehner reportedly told the amnesty advocates to “go out and win August.” As Breitbart News reported, pro-amnesty groups like La Raza launched a “month of action” campaign last August.
Boehner reportedly said he was “hell-bent” on passing amnesty legislation this year, and Valerie Jarrett, who is President Barack Obama’s confidant and top adviser, revealed that the White House had a “commitment from” Boehner for a House amnesty vote. Something may have been lost in translation when Boehner spoke with Jarrett, because Jarrett immediately walked back the remarks the day after she made them.
As Politico noted, after the “Syria crisis, the government shutdown and the botched rollout of HealthCare.gov consumed attention through the end of 2013,” House Republicans never brought up immigration legislation in the fall of 2013.