If it’s true that the House of Representatives will not authorize any pathway to citizenship in their immigration reform bill, it will create an interesting scenario. I am assuming that the Senate has the votes to create a pathway, and I’m assuming that they will pass a bill. The House can try to meld their bill with the Senate bill in conference, but the pathway issue will have to be resolved one way or the other. If it’s not, the reform effort will die in conference.
Maybe that is where this is all heading, but that seems like an unsatisfactory result for everyone involved. I still see it as a smarter bet for Boehner to orchestrate a failure to pass any bill out of the House and then to allow a vote on the Senate version with limited opportunities for amendments. The alternative, if he does want a bill to pass, would be to cave on a pathway in conference, and then pass it with a majority of Democratic votes. That seems a harder sell to his base and his caucus if they haven’t tried and failed to pass their own version.
