Immigration Reform 2013 News: Obama Says GOP Will Gain More from Immigration Reform than Democrats, But Republicans Are Wary

President Obama continues his attempts to convince Republicans in Congress to support a comprehensive immigration reform bill being created by a bipartisan group of Senators.

During a meeting today, Obama told the assembled Republicans that they have more to gain, politically speaking, from an immigration deal than Democrats do.

"He said that actually implementing immigration reform would actually benefit -- I'm just stating what he said -- that it would actually benefit Republicans more than it would Democrats," Republican Rep. Scott Rigell of Virginia said.

In last year's presidential election, 71 percent of Latinos voted to reelect Obama, support that guaranteed a win for him in crucial swing states like Florida, Colorado and Nevada.

Today Obama argued to the Republicans that he cannot make any more inroads with Hispanics; any who want to support him already do, and many support him simply because the Republican stance on immigration is too harsh, what with talk of border fences and self-deportation.

The Democrats have always supported immigration reform, so they will win no votes, but Republicans could gain some support among conservative minded Latinos.

Hispanics are the fastest growing ethnic group in the country.

Of course, Republicans are wary of any offer from the president, and they are concerned about primary challenges from the right if they support legalizing any of the nearly 11 million undocumented immigrants in the country.

In addition, many of them fear that newly minted citizens, many of whom would be Hispanic, would then become Democratic voters, futher unbalancing the scales in national elections.

But Republicans are acutely aware that even without reform, they aren't winning any national elections anyway, and it might be time to get on board before they end up on the wrong side of the issuer again, especially considering influential members of the Republican congressional leadership are spearheading this initiative.