Jonathan Bernstein, Columnist

Can You Trust the President on Immigration?

Republicans claim they don't trust Obama on immigration. They didn't trust Bush either.

February 10, 2014 at 8:50 PM UTC

Jonathan Bernstein is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering politics. A former professor of political science at the University of Texas at San Antonio, he wrote A Plain Blog About Politics.

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So I'm not exactly convinced by the recent Republican talking point that they're not able to pass immigration reform because they don't trust President Barack Obama to enforce the law. For a thorough rundown on what is actually going on with House Republicans and immigration, see Greg Sargent's excellent summary this morning. It's all about whether Republican leaders want immigration reform enough that they're willing to go against those in the party who oppose it.

It must be a close call, since the party keeps shifting back and forth between being about to pass their version of immigration reform (which, remember, we haven't actually seen yet) and declaring it dead. How will it come out? I have no idea.