A leading advocate for immigration legislation declared the long-moribund effort dead for the year, publicly voicing what many others have said privately.
Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D., Ill.), who was part of a bipartisan group who tried to craft a House immigration bill, said Wednesday he was giving up on winning needed support from Republicans. The GOP hasn't brought an immigration measure to the House floor since the Senate passed its own bipartisan legislation a year ago.
"I kept hoping the better angels in the Republican Party would tamp down the irrational and angry angels blocking reform the American people want and deserve," Mr. Gutierrez said on the House floor Wednesday.
He said he would be turning his attention to pressuring the White House to use executive action to stem deportations.
In a sign, however, of the idea's enduring appeal to some members of both parties, Sen. Charles Schumer (D., N.Y.) and Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.), appearing at a Wall Street Journal breakfast Wednesday, said they aren't ready to give up.
Mr. Schumer, an author of the Senate bill, said Tuesday's surprise comeback victory by Sen. Thad Cochran in the Mississippi Republican primary might change the GOP's calculus and free House Republicans to support immigration legislation.
"We've received some degree of help with the Cochran election and with the general trend that the tea party doesn't always win, because that's what's holding this back," said Mr. Schumer, long an optimist on immigration legislation.Read the rest of the story HERE.
Related link: Rep Luis Gutierrez: Every Institution in America' should find ways to ignore or work around federal immigration laws
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