Obama can’t be trusted on immigrations: House speaker

House of Representatives speaker Paul Ryan yesterday ruled out working with President Barack Obama on overhauling US immigration policy, saying it would be “a ridiculous notion” to pursue legislation because Obama cannot be trusted on the issue.

Republicans have fought Obama’s unilateral steps that bypassed a gridlocked Congress to try to shield millions of illegal immigrants from deportation.

Obama’s executive orders, announced last November but put on hold by the courts, would let up to 4.7 million illegal immigrants stay without threat of deportation. It was aimed mainly at helping 4.4 million people whose children are US citizens or legal permanent residents.

The immigration issue has driven a wedge between Hispanics, an increasingly important voting bloc, and Republicans, many of whom take a hard line on illegal immigration, to the benefit of Obama’s fellow Democrats. Most of the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the US are Hispanic.

Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican chosen as speaker on Thursday to replace the retiring John Boehner, said he would not try to advance comprehensive immigration legislation while Obama, whose term ends in January 2017, is president. “It would be a ridiculous notion to try and work on an issue like this with a president we simply cannot trust on this issue,” Ryan said in an interview aired on the CBS program Face the Nation.

“He tried to go it alone, circumventing the legislative process with his executive orders, so that is not in the cards. If we reach consensus on how best to achieve border and interior enforcement security, I think that’s fine,” Ryan said.

Ryan acknowledged that he promised the House Freedom Caucus, which includes the most conservative members of the House, not to bring up immigration reform legislation, and blamed Obama.

“This president tried to write the law himself,” Ryan told the CNN program State of the Union, accusing Obama of exceeding his constitutional powers.

“Presidents don’t write laws. Congress writes laws,” he said. In the race for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, candidate Donald Trump and others have talked tough about illegal immigration.

The Senate in 2013 voted to pass bipartisan legislation for the biggest overhaul of US immigration laws in decades in a generation, but the measure failed to win House approval thanks to opposition by conservative Republicans.