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By TAL KOPAN | 4/8/14 6:21 AM EDT

Boehner also said recent comments by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush that immigration is an “act of love” and shouldn’t be penalized as highly would not disqualify Bush in a presidential race, but that they were misguided.
John Boehner: Obama ‘will spoil the well’

House Speaker John Boehner blames President Barack Obama for Congress’s inability to pass an immigration reform bill, saying that it’s a lack of trust in the president that keeps members of the GOP from getting it done.

“The American people want us to deal with immigration reform,” Boehner said on Fox News’s “Kelly File” on Monday. “I’ve tried to get the House to move on this now for the last 15 or 16 months. But every time the president ignores the law, like the 38 times he has on Obamacare, our members look up and go, ‘Wait a minute: You can’t have immigration reform without strong border security and internal enforcement, how can we trust the president to actually obey the law and enforce the law that we would write?’”

The Senate passed a bipartisan, comprehensive package of immigration reforms last year, but the Republican-controlled House hasn’t taken up that bill and has been slow to move any piecemeal reforms through the lower chamber.

Obama has been pressured by Democrats to use executive powers to slow deportations and make de facto reforms to immigration, something Boehner warned would derail any efforts entirely.

“That will make it almost impossible to ever do immigration reform, because he will spoil the well to the point where no one will trust him by giving him a new law that he will implement the way the Congress intended,” Boehner said.

Boehner also said recent comments by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush that immigration is an “act of love” and shouldn’t be penalized as highly would not disqualify Bush in a presidential race, but that they were misguided.

“Listen, to most people around the world, the United States is utopia, and, frankly, most people in the world want to come here, so I understand what Jeb was saying,” Boehner said. “But we’re also a nation of laws. And for those who are here without documents, they’re going to have to face the law at some point.”

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