Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is confident that House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) will “cave in” and pass an immigration reform bill.
“I feel positive we will get an immigration bill passed,” Reid said Tuesday in an interview with the Las Vegas Sun’s editorial board.
For months immigration reform has stalled in the House, where Republicans took issue with the Senate’s comprehensive reform bill because it contained a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, among other gripes.
Reid told the Las Vegas Sun that a minority of House Republicans would have to join with Democrats to pass reform legislation containing a pathway to citizenship. But he predicted Boehner was “going to cave in,” citing polls that showed Hispanic and Asian voting blocs support a pathway to citizenship.
The GOP will bow to pressure from those minority groups if it “ever wants to elect a Republican president again,” the majority leader said.
Boehner said last month that the House had “no intention of ever going to conference on the Senate bill,” before affirming that immigration reform was “absolutely not” dead. The speaker’s office announced Tuesday that Boehner hired well-known immigration policy expert Rebecca Tallent, prompting speculation about his plans for immigration reform.
