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Boehner: Immigration Reform Difficult in 2014

February 6, 2014

House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) spoke about the difficulty of moving forward with immigration reform this year during his weekly press conference Thursday.

"I never underestimated the difficulty in moving forward this year." Boehner said, and added later: "There's widespread doubt about whether this administration can be trusted to enforce our laws. And it's going to be difficult to move any immigration legislation until that changes."

Full statement:

JOHN BOEHNER: As you all know, for the last 15 months, I’ve talked about the need to get immigration reform done. This is an important issue in our country.  It’s been kicked around forever, and it needs to be dealt with. Having said that, we outlined our principles last week to our members, principles that our members by-and-large support. It was put together by the leadership team, and they believe it. But I’ve never underestimated the difficulty in moving forward this year. The reason I’ve said that we need a step-by-step, common-sense approach to this is so we can build trust with the American people that we’re doing this the right way. And frankly, one of the biggest obstacles we face is the one of trust. The American people, including many of our members, don’t trust that the reform we’re talking about will be implemented as it was intended to be.

The president seems to change the health care law on a whim, whenever he likes. Now, he is running around the country telling everyone he’s going to keep acting on his own. He keeps talking about his phone and his pen. And he’s feeding more distrust about whether he is committed to the rule of law. Listen, there’s widespread doubt about whether this administration can be trusted to enforce our laws. It’s going to be difficult to move any immigration legislation until that changes.