Immigration reform passed the Senate with bipartisan support in a 68-32 vote on Thursday, but the fate of the Senate’s “Gang of Eight” bill remains uncertain as it reaches the House.
Speaker John Boehner says he will invoke the Hastert rule, and won’t bring the bill to the floor unless the majority of his members support it. July 10, according to Politico, will be a critical day, because the House Republican conference will meet to talk about the way forward.
“I think we’re going to take it in bite-sized chunks,” Texas Republican Blake Farenthold said on Jansing & Co. Friday.
Farenthold said he does not want to repeat the same mistakes that were made in the past on immigration reform. He tells host Richard Lui the House is a much more conservative body.
“I’m specifically concerned with the pathway to citizenship is way too generous. I’m concerned about the fact that there’s no guarantee that the border is going to be secure. You send a whole bunch more agents down there, if they don’t do anything but drive around and have rules of engagement where they can’t do what needs to be done, it’s not going to make a lick of difference,” he said.
The bill passed by the Senate includes nearly 40,000 border agents and 700 miles of fencing. Senator John McCain said it’s “well over sufficient” and would be the “most militarized border since the Berlin Wall.“
Kristin Donnelly