Paul Ryan has always been a voice of welcome for immigrants. So when the GOP’s former vice presidential candidate says the obstacle to an immigration bill is his colleagues’ distrust of President Obama’s commitment to enforcing any immigration law they pass, it’s worth a listen.
On ABC’s “This Week,” Ryan put it this way: “This isn’t a trust-but-verify, this is a verify-then-trust approach.”
The GOP distrust is well-founded.
It’s grounded in those senators who remember the way then-Sen. Obama used poison-pill amendments to help derail the 2007 reform bill that had the remarkable backing of George W. Bush, John McCain and Teddy Kennedy.
But this distrust has only grown as Republicans see the president ignore laws he doesn’t care for, whether he’s declining to enforce the employer mandate in ObamaCare, contravening the Immigration and Nationality Act by suspending deportations of children here illegally or refusing to enforce federal marijuana laws.
Now this distrust has hardened after the president’s State of the Union, where he declared that if Congress does not go along with what he wants, he will act “wherever and whenever” he can without it.
Add all this together and many Republicans reasonably conclude that no matter what immigration law they pass, the president will simply not enforce provisions he doesn’t like — in particular those dealing with securing the border.
Throughout the immigration debate, press attention has largely focused on a GOP that’s divided by the issue. Maybe there ought to be equal attention to Obama himself, who as senator helped killed one chance for a bipartisan compromise on immigration and is now on a path to do so again as president.