Pelosi Calls for Amnesty for Illegal Aliens

Speaking at the Asian-American and Pacific Islanders Summit held at the Capitol on Wednesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called for amnesty for illegal aliens in the United States, a proposal she called a “path to legalization.”

“Hopefully, we will be moving toward comprehensive immigration reform that secures our borders, enforces our laws, protects our workers, honors family unification and has a path to legalization–so that we have certainty in our country and respect for the contributions that newcomers bring to us,” she said on Capitol Hill on Wednesday.

House Minority Leader John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) office told CNSNews.com that Boehner “disagrees” with Pelosi’s comments and thinks immigration reform will not pass this year.

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Speaker Pelosi also spoke about immigration reform last week on Capitol Hill at the Catholic Community Conference. At that event, she said she had asked Catholic bishops to speak from the pulpit about how immigration reform was a “manifestation of our living the Gospels.”

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“The cardinals, the archbishops, the bishops that come to me and say, ‘We want you to pass immigration reform,’ and I say, ‘But I want you to speak about it from the pulpit,'” said Pelosi. “I want you to instruct your, whatever the communication is–the people, some of them, oppose immigration reform are sitting in those pews and you have to tell them that this is a manifestation of our living the Gospels.”

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Speaker Pelosi voted against the “Secure Fence Act of 2006,” which funded the construction a 700-mile-long double-reinforced fence along the Mexican border. President George W. Bush signed the legislation into law in October 2006. Pelosi has favored amnesty for illegal aliens in the past but has not brought a bill that would provide amnesty to a vote in the House since she became speaker after the 2006 election. In 2004, when she was given the “Legislative Award” of the League of United Latin American Citizens, she said: “We do not need a temporary worker program; we need a meaningful pathway to citizenship.”

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