Rep. Luis Gutierrez, one of the most outspoken voices in the House in favor of comprehensive immigration reform, laid into both Democrats and Republicans Thursday morning for how the two parties have handled the issue.
Once Speaker John A. Boehner made clear to President Obama this year that the House was not moving on a comprehensive bill, Mr. Gutierrez said, “The president decided to make a political calculation” and delay any planned executive action until the end of the summer.
“And then comes the end of the summer, he says, ’Well, I’m going to wait until after the election,’ ” Mr. Gutierrez, Illinois Democrat, said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “Well, guess what? You know what? You usually don’t get good public policy and what you get is a cynicism of the public when you put politics ahead of good public policy.”
“So what did we get?” he continued. “We lost the Senate any way and infuriated, angered, disillusioned lots of voters that might well have come out to vote in Florida and in the Colorado election, not to talk about other elections that might have been close.”
All eyes are now once again on Mr. Obama and possible executive actions he might take to grant some form of legal status to most of the illegal immigrants currently in the country, with some Republicans now pushing for language in a forthcoming spending bill they say would prevent Mr. Obama from doing do.
Mr. Gutierrez said the GOP is part of the problem, too, and that some Republicans’ Senate campaigns played off of fears of the Ebola virus and the Islamic State terrorist group. But he said he’s willing to sit down with Republicans to hash out the issue and said there’s still time to do it.
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“So here’s what I say: Let’s stop the politics; put it aside,” he said. “The Republicans really doubled down during the election, you know, ’Secure the border, secure the border because the Mexicans are coming to take away our jobs and bringing crime.’ But not only that — they poisoned the well by winning elections to the Senate by saying ’Ebola is also coming through and ISIS,’ so they really poisoned that well.”
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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