Rep. Linda Sanchez Discusses New Immigration Bill

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: I just want to ask you, why now? And why do you think this time it’ll be any different, given the, what I just said, 35 years of different presidents promising something have come to nothing?

REP. LINDA SANCHEZ (D-CA): Sure. Well, we have a really unique opportunity right now because Democrats control the House and the Senate. And we have a president and an administration that recognizes the need to fix our broken immigration system once and for all. So, the moon, the stars, and the planets are aligning in order to get this done. In addition, based on the last four years of cruelty and chaos in our immigration system, the American public overwhelmingly supports fixing our broken immigration system once and for all, making it more humane, helping us grow our economy, and helping us manage our border in a way that makes sense. So, I think we absolutely have the right set of circumstances to get this done.

AMANPOUR: So, there’s been a broad consensus over many, many years of how to, I guess, formulate this, strengthen border security and provide some humane path to citizenship. But the last time there was a major effort to get it to work, I think it was under George W. Bush in 2006, and it failed. Again, you say the stars are aligned, but you don’t necessarily have all the Democrats, right, to — all the votes you need to pass it anyway in the Senate.

SANCHEZ: Well, it’s important to note that we have just begun this process. The bill was just introduced last week. We are doing outreach to inform our colleagues in the Senate and the House what the bill contains, to take their input, questions, concerns. As anybody will tell you, when you first introduce a bill, the final product doesn’t usually exactly align to what the bill looks like when you first started. So, we have an opportunity here to have those conversations and to move the bill along. And I do think that we can do this. Again, it’s been decades since we have had a president who has committed to putting political muscle behind a comprehensive immigration reform bill. And I might add that, historically, immigration reform has been bipartisan, and we have had bills in the past either clear the Senate or the House, just not taken up by the Republican majorities in the other chamber. Again, having control of the House and the Senate makes that likely and, in fact, doable. So, we think we would have a real chance to once and for all fix this broken system that has left so many people waiting for relief.