Pelosi and Reid on Immigration

Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid delivered their assessment on the State of Our Union today at the National Press Club.  Their remarks were followed by a short Q&A where a specific question was asked about immigration. 

MODERATOR: OK, this is for both of you. What are the prospects for comprehensive immigration reform in 2008?

REID: I think comprehensive immigration reform in 2008 is going to be very hard to come by.

I may not be an expert on many things, but I'm an expert on legislating immigration. We spent last year many, many weeks in the Senate trying to legislate with immigration. And the last go round, the president said he would help us. And I have said publicly I appreciate that. But his help didn't gain much. We had 12 Republicans who supported us on comprehensive immigration reform. That's all.

We have found that they refuse to allow us to do things that were good, that would control our northern and southern borders, have a temporary guest worker program, would allow a pathway to legalization, no amnesty for these 12 million people. They would not go to the front of the line, the back of the line, they'd have to pay penalties and fines, learn to speak English, stay out of trouble, pay taxes.

They wouldn't let us do that. So now what we have, every time we offer a piece of legislation, they want to build a higher, longer wall, punitive things that I think are really shortsighted.

REID: So I don't think we'll get anything done this year. We have the presidential election, we have a number of very important House and Senate races, and our time is really squeezed.

So I think we're going to have to look forward to some new leadership. We need a president who is willing to step forward and get them more than 12 of this party to support this legislation.

Nancy, do you want to say anything?

PELOSI: Thank you, Harry.

Harry is absolutely right. If we are going to have comprehensive immigration reform, it has to come from the -- with the leadership of the president of the United States.

This is an area we thought we could work closely with the president on because he had -- his heart and head were in the right place. He understood the issue, being the former Governor of Texas.

We all agreed that we had to secure our borders, enforce our laws, protect our workers. We talked about a path to legalization where if we can bring people out of the shadows and into their full economic contribution to our society and our economy, and to do so in a way that unified families. Those were the principles that we were operating under.

And then, perhaps because things had come so easy to the president with the Republicans and the Senate before, the minute there was a problem, the White House was not up to the task of bringing the leadership necessary to make this happen.

So, if it isn't going to happen in the Senate, it's not going to happen. But it doesn't mean that it doesn't need to happen, and we have to continue to work together because there are too many aspects of our economy, if we're just talking pragmatically, that depend on a comprehensive immigration reform, and then expanding beyond through H- 1B Visas, H2-B Visas, guest worker programs, ag jobs -- the list goes on.

PELOSI: But this has to be done comprehensively -- again, securing our borders, enforcing our laws, protecting our workers and, again, respecting what so many people do bring to our economy.

I just want to say, because I believe our time is coming to an end, the question on bipartisanship. It has been in the interest of some to beat this drum that we didn't do anything working together. But right from the start last year, for our six for '06, on every initiative we put forth, we were looking for common ground. We weren't looking for a fight.

So that raising the minimum wage, strong bipartisan support. Cutting in half the interest rates on student loans, strong bipartisan support. Our first bill, H.R. 1, enacting the 9/11 Commission recommendations, strong bipartisan support. Passing stem cell research legislation -- it was not signed by the president, but strong bipartisan support. SCHIP, the children's health program, veto-proof bipartisanship in the United States Senate; not quite that, but strong bipartisan support. The innovation agenda.

The list goes on and on, where we have had strong bipartisan cooperation and support and where the bills were signed by the president. This is all eclipsed by the Iraq war because the president has his head in the sand on this war that is for him a war without end -- no end in sight, no light at the end of the tunnel, any analogy or cliche that you want to use.

And because we could not come to terms on that, it eclipsed what we were able to accomplish in a bipartisan way.

The reason we were able to achieve the stimulus package was for really the first time that we had something that the president wanted. But he hasn't really had an agenda that we could bargain over.

He needed the stimulus package. He finally admitted it the end of last week. Any homemaker in America could have told him months ago that our country was heading for a downturn, and we needed a change in economic policy. But it finally dawned on the president the end of last week.

We quickly went into motion because we have known also for a long time that this needed to be done.

But in order to have bipartisanship, you have to share common values or you have to be in a position where you can negotiate. I think hopefully this stimulus will serve as a model on how we can go forward in this year, and hopefully immigration can be one of those issues.

PELOSI: But I associate myself with the comments of Senator Reid and what he says because the reality is in the United States Senate.

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