House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said today that no comprehensive immigration reform package will be passed without Democratic votes. “Whatever we do is not going to pass with one party or another. If you want to do it, that bill has a lot of merit to solving the problem,” McCarthy said.
It was revealed last week that President Trump will call for a pathway to citizenship for 1.8 million illegal immigrants in exchange for $25 billion in border wall funding and other immigration reforms. The White House has pledged to release a framework on immigration reform on Monday. McCarthy said that he would like to get an immigration bill passed “as soon as possible.”
“I think there’s urgency to get this done, unfortunately the government was shut down by [Sen. Chuck] Schumer…They thought they wanted to take it hostage. That stopped the meetings we were having every day in my office and so let’s just [go] back to the table and solve it,” McCarthy said.