White House Encourages House To Pass Senate Bill On Immigration Reform

On June 27, the Senate passed a groundbreaking, 1,200-page bill to reform immigration laws for the first time in nearly 30 years. However, the senators barely had time to celebrate the 68-to-32 victory before debate began over whether the House of Representatives would pass the legislation in response. The outlook was unoptimistic from the start.

Now, to continue to add to the pressure slowly piling on the Republican controlled House, the White House has released a new report entitled, "Fixing Our Broken Immigration: The Economic Benefits to Agriculture and Rural Communities."

As the report notes, between 2007 and 2009, 71 percent of crop workers in the U.S. were foreign born. Moreover, "Among [the passed Senate bill's] most important provisions, the bipartisan bill would provide an earned path to citizenship for unauthorized farmworkers who are vital to our nation's agriculture industry...."

The document is 20 pages long. Still, the prospect it will make much of a difference to Republican leaders is bleak.

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) recently stated, "Tentatively, in October, we're going to vote on a border security bill, an interior enforcement bill, a bill for legal immigration."

So even as the heat surrounding the legislation seems to be reaching its boiling point this summer, the temperature will most likely continue to rise into the fall.